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MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART

NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS

STANDARD REFERENCE MATERIAL 1010a

(ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2)

OMME BATTLE STORIES

A BATTLE STORY

Somme Battle Stories

RECORDED BT

CAPTAIN A. J. DAWSON

ILLUSTRATED BY

CAPTAIN BRUCE BAIRNSFATHER

PubRshed jor

"THE BYSTANDER"

HODDER AND STOUGHTON

LONDON TORONTO NEW YORK

MCMXVI

CONTENTS __^_

CHAPTER 1 ^A<»»

"WHAT it's like" IN THE PUSH . . 1

CHAPTER II

THE SPIWT C THE BRITISH '^DIEB . . 80

CHAPTER III

THE MORAL OF THE BOCHE .... 84

CHAPTER IV

AN IRISH OFFICER DESCRIBES THE INDE-
SCRIBABLE *'

CHAPTER V

CLOSE QUARTERS

CHAPTER VI

78
THE devil's wood *"

CHAPTER VII

THE COCKNEY FIGHTER

▼i CONTENTS

CHAPTER VIII PAGE

" WE don't count wounds in my regiment ** 97

CHAPTER IX
A revebend cobpobal 107

CHAPTER X
bbothebs of the pabsonaoe .... 119

CHAPTER XI

the AUSTRALIAN AS A FIOHTEB . . . 182

CHAPTER XII

NEWS FOB THE O.C. COMPANY AT HOME . . 142

CHAPTER XIII

** 8TICKFA8T " AND HIS OFFICEB . 154

CHAPTER XIV

A COOL CANADIAN 165

CHAPTER XV

THE HOSPITAL MAIL-BAGS 177

CHAPTER XVI

THE DIFFERENCE 190

CONTENTS V"

CHAPTER XVII PAGE

WHAT EVEBY M.O. KNOWS ...•-«""

CHAPTER XVIII

211
THE SOUTH AFEICAN • *

CHAPTER XIX

„ 21d

** it's ▲ OBEAT DO "

CHAPTER XX

ON THE WAY TO LONDON 280

CHAPTER I

"what it's like" in the push

There is nothing of the professional
publicist about the average wounded
soldier, oflacer or man, now landing day
by day at Southampton. They are all
more concerned— thank goodness !— with
action than speech ; with doing things and
getting them done, rather than with
describing them.

It is not, of course, that these heroes
of ours are either unwilling or unable to
talk. They are ahnost invariably, and no
matter what the nature of their wounds,
in the highest of good spirits ; delighted

2 WHAT IT'S LIKE IN THE PUSH

IM R

to pay a visit to BUghty ; happy to have
had the chance of playing the fine part
they have played in the great Allied
offensive; absolutely assured as to the
victorious outcome of the Push. But
they have no very accurate notions as to
the relative values of the different, dis-
jointed, staccato, frequently vivid bits
of information they have to dispense.
With matches, or scraps of paper, or a
nicotine-stained forefinger made to serve
as pencil in the nearest conveniently
dusty surface, they will give you elaborate
expositions of the tactics they have hdped
to work out. Their little lectures on the
strategy of the Push are frequently
couched in language more graphic, racy,
and convincing than the most free and
easy of Generals ever permits himself

WHAT rrS LIKE IN THE PUSH 8

to use. And their lovable faces some-
times show a glimaner of disappointment,
for that one does not take copious notes
regarding these demonstrations. But, on
the other hand, they deprecate with almost
pitying wonder the notes one does jot
down from time to time in talk with
them, when (by accident) they enrich
one with some vivid, stabbing little thrust
of triumphant scene-painting likely to
provide an answer to the constantly re-
iterated question as to "what it*s like"
in the Push.

" Oh, I say, you know, don't bother
about that guff. Everyone knows about
that, of course. But, if ycu really want

I to know what the plan wcis in the

show, I can tell you in a minute, so far
as our Brigade went. You sec, zero was

4 WHAT IT*S LIKE IN THE PUSH

, and we were on the right flank of

the ," etc.

At the moment one has specially in
mind a young Company Commander, a

Captain of the ; almost the last

woimded officer to be landed from the

hospital ship on a certain recent

night. He had a good deal of the descrip-
tive gift, and was perfectly unconscious
of his occasional use of it. One strained
his indulgence a good deal, and took
many notes while talking with him. What
one sets down here are just the bits he
regarded as "guff"; convinced that
" everyone knows about that, of course."
His fluent strategy and tactics— but I
promise they shall be preserved in the
archives of his grateful country.

" Eh ? Oh, just an ordinary front line

WHAT IT'S LIKE IN THE PUSH 5

trenchj you know; rather chipped about,
of course, by the Boche heavies, you know ;

but Oh, hang it, you know what

the ordinary fire trench looks like ; along
the north side of the Mamctz Wood we
were. What ? Oh, yes, we were packed
pretty close, of course, while we were
waiting; only got there a little before
midnight. My chaps were all in splendid
heart, and keen as mustard to get the
word * Go ! ' I was lucky ; met my

friend G almost directly we got in.

He's had months in that bit of the line,
and knew every twist of it. so was able to
give me tips. He took me along to his dug-
out, after I'd got all my chaps in position,
and gave me some jolly good hot caf6-
au-lait.

Tell you a funny thing about that

{(

6 WHAT rrS LIKE IN THE PUSH

dug-out after. Good dug-out, with a
damed sight better overhead cover than
most, or it wouldn't have been there,
after the pounding the line had had in the

week before. G had a magnificent

arrangement for cooking. I forget the
name of the stove ; but you pump it up
like a bicycle tyre, and then it bums like
the deuce ; gives you a hot drink before
you can turn round. Tm going to have
one before I go back. We had two good-
sized kettles, and after we'd finished our
drink we ran a regular canteen for about
half an hour ; boiling up caf6-au-lait as fast
as the machine would turn it out, and dish-
ing it out all along the line of my fello\^ %
in their mess-tins. The weather was jolly
just then ; but there'd been a lot of rain,
and the trench was in a beastly state.

WHAT IT'S LIKE IN THE PUSH 7

You know what it's like, after a lot of
strafing, when you get heavy rains on
the chumed-up ground. It was like por-
ridge with S3rrup over it, and we were
all absolutely plastered, hair and mou-
staches and everything, before we'd been
half an hour in the place. The Boche
was crumping us pretty heavy all the
time, but it didn't really matter, because
for some reason he didn't seem to have
got our range just right, and nearly all his
big stuff was landing in front, or behind,
and giving us very little but the mud
of it.

"What did worry me a bit was his
machine guns. His snipers, too, seemed
fairly on the spot, though how the devil
they could be, with our artillery as busy
as it was, I can't think. But I know

8 WHAT IT*S LIKE IN THE PUSH

several of my sentries were laid out by
rifle bullets. I particulariy wanted to let
the others get a smoke when they could,
seeing we'd be there three or four hours ;
helps to keep 'em steady in the waiting,
you know; but we had to be mighty
careful about matches, the Boche being
no more than a hundred yards off. I hate
the feeling of that stinking porridgey clay
caking on your hands and face, don't
you ? But one didn't notice it, after a bit,
because it was the same all over. But
one had to watch out for rifles and
ammunition, and that, you know. Pretty
easy to get all the rifle barrels bunged
up, in the dark, you know. Our Adjutant
came along about three, checking up
watches and giving us Divisional time.
Mine was all right ; never stopped once

WHAT IT'S LIKE IN THE PUSH 9

fipom the day I bought it till that left wrist
of mine was hit. See I It registers my
first hit— 8.26. I'll keep that ; souvenir ;
but I'm afraid it's done as a timekeeper.

"Just before three I got my position
right in the middle of my company We
were going over at 8.25, you know. The
trench was deep there, with a hell of a lot of
mud and water; but there was no set
parapet left; just a gradual slope of
muck, as though cartloads of it had been
dropped from the sky by giants— spilt
porridge. I wanted to be first out, if I
could— good effect on the men, you know
—but I couldn't trust myself 1 that
muck; so I'd collared a rum-case from
's dug-out, and was nursing the bloom-
ing thing, so that when the time came I
could plant it in the mud and get a bit of

10 WHAT rrS LIKE IN THE PUSH

a spring from that. Glad I did, too. I
passed the word along at a quarter past to
be ready for my whistle ; but it was all you
could do to make a fellow hear by shouting
in his ear. Our heavies were giving it lip
then, I can tell you. I was m a devil of a
steiv lest some of my chaps should get over
too soon. They kept wriggling up and
forward in the mud. They were frightfully
keen to get moving. I gathered from my
sergeant their one fear was that if we
couldn't soon get going our artillery would
have left no strafing for us to do. Little
they knew their Boche, if they thought
that.

** I thought I could just make out our
artillery lift, about a minute and a half
before the twenty-five, but I wouldn't
swear to it. On the stroke of the twenty-

WHAT rrS LIKE IN THE PUSH 11

five I got a good jump from my rum-box,
and fell head first into a little pool ; whizz-
bang hole, I suppose; something email.
It loosened two of my front teeth pretty
much, rd my whistle in my teeth, you
see. But I blew like blazes directly I
got my head up. Never made a sound.
Whistle full of mud. But it didn't matter
a bit. They aU saw me take my dive, and
a lot were in front of me when I got going.
But I overhauled 'em, and got in front.

"I beUeve we must have got nearly
fifty yards without a casualty. But it's
hard to say. It wasn't light, you know ;
just a glimmering kind of a greyness.
Not easy to spot casualties. The row, of
course, was deafening; and we were
running like lamplighters. You remem-
ber our practice stunts at home ? Short

12 WHAT IT'S LIKE IN THE PUSH

rushes, and taking cover in folds of the
ground. Remember your file of direction,
sir; dressin' by the right; an' all that.
Oh, the boys remembered it right enough.
But, good Lord, it wasn't much like
SaUsbury Plain. We were going hell for
leather, you know. You think you're
going strong, and— whoosh 1 You've put
your face deep in porridge. Fallen in a
shell-hole. You trip over some blame thing
and you turn a complete somersault, and
you're on again, not quite sure which end
of you is up ; spitting out mud, wonder-
ing where your second wind is. Lord, you
haven't a notion whether you're hit or
not. I felt that smack on my left wrist,
alo^g with a dozen other smacks of one
sort and another, but I didn't know it
waf a woimd for an hour or more. All

WHAT IT'S LIKE IN THE PUSH 18

you thought about was trying to keep
your rifle muzzle up ; and I guess the
fellows behind must 've thought a bit
about not stickin* us with their bayonets
more'n they could help. I was shouting

, the local name of the reghnent,

you know. The boys like it. But my
sergeant, who was close to me, was just
yelling : ' Down 'em, boys 1 ' and * Stick
'em ! Stick 'em I ' for all he was worth.

" My lot were boimd for the second
line, you see. My No. 12 Platoon, with
18 of ' D,' were to look after cleaning up
the Boche first line. There was no real
parapet left in that Boche front line.
Their trench was just a sort of gash, a
ragged crack in the porridge. Where I was
there was quite a bit of their wire left ; but,
do you know, one didn't feel it a bit. You

14 WHAT IT'S LIKE IN THE PUSH

can judge a bit from my rags what it was
like. We went at it like fellows in a race
charge the tape ; and it didn't hurt us any
more. Only thing that worried us was
the porridge and the holes. Your feet
sinking down make you feel you're crawl-
ing ; making no headway. I wish I could
have seen a bit better. It was all a
muddy blur to me. But I made out a line
of faces in the Boche ditch ; and I know
I gave a devil of a yell as we jumped
for those faces. Lost my rifle there.
'Fraid I didn't stick my man, really,
because my bayonet struck solid earth.
I just smashed my fellow. We went down
into the muck together, and another
chap trod on my neck for a moment.
Makes you think quick, I tell you. I
pulled that chap down on top of my

iMMn

WHAT IT'S LIKE IN THE PUSH 15

other Bjche, and just took one good
look to make sure he was a Boche ; and
then I gave him two rounds from my
revolver, with the barrel in his face. I
think I killed the under one too; but
can't be sure.

" Next thing I knew we were scrambling
on to the second line. It was in the wire
of the second line that I got my knock-
out; this shoulder, and some splinters in
my head. Yes, bomb. I was out of
business then; but as the Hght grew I
could see my chaps having the time of
their lives inside that second line. One
of 'em hauled me in after a bit, and I got
a drink of beer in a big Boche dug-out,
down two separate flights of steps. My
hat I that beer was good, though it was
Gennan. But look here, I'm in No. 5

16 WHAT IT'S LIKE IN THE PUSH

train, that that chap's calling. I must
get ashore. Just want to tell you about

that dug-out of G 's in oi r own hne,

you know. It was four o'clock in the
afternoon, and we'd got the Bazentin
Wood all, right, then, when my orderly,
who never got a scratch, was helping me
back, making for our dressing station.
We crawled into what had been a trench,
and while I was taking a breather I sort
of looked round, and made out a bit
here and a bend there. Begad, it was
the trench we started from !

** Seems nothing, but you've no idea
how odd it was to me ; like di'opping into a
bit of England, after about a century and
a half in— in some special kind of hell,
you know. Seemed so devilish odd that
any mortal thing should be the same

« I

WHAT IT'S LIKE IN THE PUSH i7

anywhere, after that day. Not that it
was the same really. My rum-case wa*
in splinters, sticking up out of the porridge,
and I found my map-case there ; torn off
my belt as we got over at 8.25. * Won't
be much left of that dug-out,* I thought ;
and I got my orderly to help me along to
see. Couldn't find the blessed thing, any-
how. Went backwards and forwards three
or four times. Then I spotted the head

of a long trench stick that G had

carried pokin' out through soft earth
at the back of the trench. The orderly
worked that stick about a little, and the
earth fell ?' y. It was just loose, dry
stuff blowii i the re* ? of the dug-out,
and blocking the Uttle entrance. Came
away at a touch, almost, and there was
the little hole you got in by. I worried

#»

18 WHAT IT'S LIKE IN THE PUSH

through, somehow. I was really curious
to see. If you'll believe me, the inside
of that dug-out— -it looked like a
drawing-room to me after— after the
outside, you know— it was just exactly
the same as when we'd left it the night
before. There was the fine stove we
made the caf6-au-lait on, with a hdf-
empty box of matches balanced on the
side of it, and the last empty tin of the
coffee stuff we'd used, with the broken-
handled spoon standing up in it, just as

I'd left it; and G 's note-book lying

open, and face down on an air pillow, in
his bunk— most extraordinary homely.
" There was I, looking at his note-book

and his hold-all, and poor G dead.

Yes, I'd seen his body. And the rats, too ;
the rats were cavorting around on the felt

WHAT IT'S LIKE IN THE PUSH 19

of the roof, happy as sand-boys They
didn't know anything about the Push, I
suppose. By the way, we found only dead
rats in the Boche trenches. They say it
was our gas. I don't know ; but there
were thousands of dead rats there ; and
millions of live fleas ; very live they were.
I must get. Cheero 1 "

CHAPTER II

THE SPIRIT OF THE BRITISH SOLDIER

There is no vestige of any falling off in
the general level of high spirits and
confidence among our wounded officers
and men from the battlefields of the
Somme. One writes of battlefields in the
plural, because in this Push there have
already been a score and more engage-
ments which, as we used to judge war,
would take rank as very notable and
sanguinary battles; just as there have
been, literally, many thousands of indi-
vidual acts which, in war as we have known
it in the past, would have won for those

SPIRIT OF BRITISH SOLDIER 21

responsible the very highest distinctions
we have to offer.

** I don't know what the dispatch
writers, let alone the military historians,
are going to do about this Somme fight-
ing," said an elderly Major, wounded in
hand and shoulder, on the Bapaume-
Albert road, below Pozi^res. " I saw
rather a wider sector than some other
officers, simply because it happened I
had to get to and fro several times between
our Brigade Headquarters and three of
our battalions. I assure you I could
easily compile a volume of bald records
of individual acts of heroism and the
heroism of isolated sections, taking only
what I saw with my own eyes. But I
should hesitate to do it, because of the
impUed injustice to the troops on other

h I

■ I

i'i

22 SPIRIT OF BRITISH SOLDIER

sectors. IVe talked with lots of officers
between the trenches and here, including
one Divisional Staff officer and two of
Brigade Staffs from different parts of our
front, and I gather the same impression
from all. The things I saw would have
been exceptional, very exceptional, and
the sort of things that pages and pages
were written about— before this war. But
they weren't in the least exceptional, as
incidents of this present Push go. Such
things have been happening, literally, all
along our line, and during every hour of
every day and night since July 1st."

" Does that tally with your experi-
ence ? *' one asked a Company Com-
mander who was leaning beside us on the
ship's rail waiting for his time to go
ashore for the train. His left arm was in a

SPIRIT OF BRITISH SOLDIER 28

sling and bandages were swathed about
his head.

" Funny 1 I was just asking myself
that very question. I was just thinking,"

replied Captain . " I was wondering

how I'd manage if somebody asked me
for a dozen names from my own Com-
pany, for men to receive distinctions. I
tell you it would be a devil of a job, and
one I'd much rather not have. Suppose
I try to think, on the other hand, of any
one man in my Company, or in what I
saw of the rest of the Battalion, since
July ISv, whom I'd just as soon have been
without, a man who didn't play the game
as well as he might have done. Gad, do
you know, there's not a blessed one,
not a single one. And, what's more, I
haven't heard of one in any other unit,

24 SPIRIT OF BRITISH SOLDIER

not a single one, and one hears a devil of a
lot, one way and another, bucking with
this man and the other all the way be-
tween there and here, you know.

** Traid I*m not much of a praying
man ; but, tell you what, if I*d set to work
praying on the night before we went
into this show— and, mind you, I daresay
lots of chapp not previously given that
way did pray that night. It's a big thing,
you know, taking your men into a real
large scale battle for the first time,
when they were all civilians a little time
back, and perhaps you were the same
yourself— if I had, on that last night of
June, I reckon what I should have prayed
would have been that my Company should
accomplish just about half what it did.
Ton my soul, I shouldn't have dared

SPIRIT OF BRITISH SOLDIER 25

to ask that they should do all that they
actually did when the time came. I
should have thought that was asking a
jolly sight more than was reasonable.
No, I'd have asked for about half what I
got, and thought myself thundering lucky
if I got it. As it was, I'm perfectly cer-
tain that a company of Guardsmen, with
ten years' soldiering behind each man of
'em, couldn't have done more than my
chaps did. They mightn't even have
done quite so much. You see, our chaps
felt the honour of the New Army was
at stake, and its reputation all to make.
We'd told 'em what the Boche newspapers
said about 'em: how Kitchener's men
didn't count seriously, and all that ; and,
by gad, they went into the scrap like
knights of the olden time with their

W SPIRIT OF BRITISH SOLDIER

i\ II.

1 ) hM

ladies lookin* on, you know; as though
the New Army would stand or fall in
history according as each single one of
'em carried himself in this show. You
couldn't check 'em; nothing was too bad
for 'em ; and, I give you my word, nothing
you can possibly say will be too good for
'em."

" Well, Sergeant, what's yours ? " The
inqmry was addressed to a fine upstanding
sergeant of the Middlesex, who elected
to walk ashore instead of being carried,
though he was glad of a comrade's shoulder
to lean on. A year or two ago the ques-
tion might have suggested an American
bar, but not on the landing stage at
Southampton in these days.

"Oh, I got it just below me thigh,
here, sir; nothing to write home about.

SPIRIT OF BRITISH SOLDIER 27

anyway. I ought to be back this way
again in a week or two. I hope I wiU.
You see, sir, the second sergeant in my
platoon got it fairly in the neck-^proper
bad, I'm afraid he is. They do say he
may have to lose his right foot. Any-
how, he won't be back for some time, if at
all ; and it's bad for the platoon for the
two of us to be away. Now they've made
such a fine start I want to be with 'em
an' keep 'em up to it. Though you
wouldn't have said they wanted much
keeping up to it, sir ; not if you'd seen 'em
at it. I reckon they saved the Battalion's-
flank there between Authille an' Ovillers ;
an' there's no sort of doubt they smashed
the flank of the Boche battaUon. He'd
got a reg'lar nest o' typewriters there;
machine guns, I should say, sir. We

28 SPIRIT OF BRITISH SOLDIER

stood it for a bit, an' then my officer he
began to get pretty mad with 'em. Always
was a bit on the hot-tempered side, you
know, sir ; but as good an officer as ever
I served with.

Here, damn their German eyes ! '
he says, just Hke that, when he see our
chaps a-droppin'. * We'll get these devils
in [he flank,' he says. ' They're not goin'
to tell off my platoon that way. Come
on, Sergeant,' he says; *at the double
now. Get those bombers of ours close
up here behind me.' We fairly raced then
for their right flank, an' all there was of
us tumbled down into their ditch all of a
lump. ' Bombers here I ' yells my officer.
He'd got two machine gun bullets in him
then. Much he cared for that. We got
our bombers up, and— well, as my officer

SPIRIT OF BRITISH SOLDIER 29

said, sir, we did fairly give 'em heU
after that. The platoon went through
that trench like a dose o' salts, as ye
might say, sir. Worried along it, like
terriers in a rat earth. Never so glad in
me Ufe to have plenty of bombs. We
bombed the trer Tair empty; an' any
Boehe that missed the bombs, well, he
got the steel, an' got it good an' hard;
in an' out, an' in again every time, to

make sure.

" An' that's how our Battalion was able
to make such a good advance, sir. The
rest of our Company was layin' doggo
while we promenaded down that bloomin'
trench; an' when my officer gave the
word— he'd got a third bullet in him,
then, sir, not to mention bomb spHnters
an' the like o' that— they come on like

90 SPIRIT OF BRITISH SOLDIER

i:.

a cup-tie football crowd, an* the reit of
the Battalion after them. They went
over that first line with hardly a casualty,
barrin' just a few from shrap ; an' if they
didn't give the Boche what for, in his
second an' third hues, I'd like to know.

" My officer was fair runnin' blood by
then. He got so many splinters, you see,
sir, about the head an' face, besides the
three bullets he'd got in him. I found
him sittin' on a Boche machine gun
lightin' a fag; a cigarette, I should say,
sir. The Boche machine gunner was
there, too ; only he'd never smoke no more
cigarettes, nor fire no more machine guns.
He was done up pretty nasty, sir, was that
gunner. But his gun was all right,
because I saw two of our own M.G. section
firing of it not many minutes later.

I found him wttin' on a Boche machine gun.lightin a fag.'

:'♦

if'

'.I

SPIRIT OF BRITISH SOLDIER •!

I tried to make my officer let me help him
back for dressin', but he wouldn't haye
it— not then. He smoked his cigarette,
while I put the Platoon on cleaning out
dug-outs in that trench. I don't mean
the mud, you know, sir. We knew we
weren't gom' to hold the trench, became
we was pushin' farther on. No, but a
good many Boches had taken cover in
them dug-outs ; an' what wouldn't come
out when we gave 'em their own bat, ye
Imow, sir— 'Kommen Sie hier,' an' aU
that— well, they had their choice between
bomb an' baynit, as ye might say.

"There was a few of 'em played the
game pretty well, I will say. They'd a
young officer with 'em, an' they fired at
ui ai fast as we could get near the mouth
o' their dug-out. We didn't want to hurt

llfc

82 SPIRIT OF BRITISH SOLDIER

the beggars, but we*d got our job, same's
they had theirs; an' in the end theirs
was bombs—in the neck. But most of
the others jumped to the word, an' come
out quick an' lively on the order. We got
forty-seven of 'em, very little damaged.
We disarmed the lot, an' when we joined
up with the rest of the Company my
officer took that bunch of prisoners back
to our old Hnes by himself. Got two of
the biggest to carry him at the rear of the
squad on two rifles. He had his revolver
in one hand and a Mills bomb in the other.
Cheero, Sergeant ! ' he says to me.
• Keep the boys a-movin' till I get back.*
But bless you, sir, they don't want any
telling. No more'n terriers want tellin'
to get after rats. I was wounded half
an hour after that ; an' nex' time I saw

SPIRIT OF BRITISH SOLDIER 88

my officer was down at the dressin* station.
I only saw the one German officer— that
boy in the dug-out. I think that's one
reason why the Boche is losin' heart a
bit, an' shows himself pretty ready to be
taken prisoner. His officers do keep most
uncommon weU out of the way; very
different from ours. An' I suppose it
makes their men feel the game is up. But
they fight real well tiU you're right on top
of 'em. I'll say that. Only, man for man,
when it comes to it, they can't live along-
side our chaps, ye know, sir— not they.'*

CHAPTER III

THE MORAL OF THE BOCHE

"Yes, I think you may take it Master
Boche will never again set foot on the
ground we have won from him thig
month, and I think he knows it. But,
although it's mighty hard to get, the
ground weVe got from him is the least
of the things we Ve taken from the German
Army, as I see it. The main gain is in
the changes wrought in the two armies—
the Hun*s and ours— since July 1st. And
that you can't reckon in figures. Begad,
there aren't any figures big enough for
the reckoning."

THE MORAL OF THE BOCHE 85

These were the words of Lieut-. Colonel

, Commanding Officer of the th

, spoken just before he landed

from one of the hospital ships. His
wound, one is glad to say, is a slight one,
affecting one hand only, and this gallant
officer himself regarded with some irrita-
bility the action of the medical authori-
ties in separating him from his unit at
all at the present time.

"I asked for a dressing, and they
insist on giving me a trip to BUghty.
However, thank goodness, I can trust my
Second-in-Command, and I shall be back
with my Battalion before very many
days are over."

A wounded Captain from another batta-
lion was sitting beside us in the companion-
way, and nodded thoughtfully over the

mtm

86 THE MORAL OF THE BOCHE

;.«

Colonel's reference to those of our recent
gains which cannot be measured in villages
or in thousands of yards.

"Yes," said the Captain, "it's the
blow to the Boche moral that counts
more than the ground."

"Moral. It's one of those words
that people are constantly using," said
the Colonel. "I wonder if the general
public have any very clear idea what it
covers. They use so many words now
which don't really give 'em pictures,
and words that don't convey pictures
to the average mind aren't very inform-
ing, you know, really. When I've been
home on leave I've found all sorts of
people talking glibly of dug-outs, fire-
trenches, barrages, consolidation, and so
on, with never a hint of a picture in

THE MORAL OF THE BOCHE 87

their minds of what the words really
stand for.

" Fighting's a pretty queer business,
you know, when you come to think it
out, especially this sort of tornado of
fighting we get now, and for twentieth-
century men, lots of whom never had so
much as a shot-gun in their hanr^i, lill a
year ago. It's more of a miracle than
people at home will ever imderstand, is
the New Army. And one of the most
miraculous things about it is that at the
present moment it is carrying on fighting
of a kind vastly more terrible than any that
the world has ever seen before, and, mark
you, carrying it on with as fine a steadi-
ness, with as much stubbornness, and as
much dash, too, as any veteran army
known to history has ever shown. And

88 THE MORAL OF THE BOCHE

if that isn't something of a miracle— well,
you ask any Commanding Officer with
more than ten years* service behind him.

"This business of fighting— fighting
continuously and cheerily in the presence
of devastating casualties— has a good deal
in common with swimming and bicycling
and things of that sort in which instinct
plays a big part ; horse-riding, too ; any-
thing that demands perfectly smooth co-
ordination of thoughts, nerves, muscles,
and— well, and spirit. The material sup-
plies are essential, and in the fighting
we've got before us now any failure in
the material supplies must mean complete
and most bloody failure all along the
line. But there are other essentials, too.
Every experienced leader of soldiers knows
it ; aye, and prays over it, if he happens

THE MORAL OF THE BOCHE 89

to be that sort. But I suppose nobody
can describe it ; define it, I should say."

(The Colonel and the Captain were
clearly thinking hard, in this odd inter-
lude in their journey from shell-swept
trenches to quiet English hospitals. They
nodded occasionally one to another, as
two men who perfectly understood the
matter in hand, and entirely agreed that
it could not be explained.)

" Your Staff arrangements may be per-
fect, and your material all there, you know,
but if the other thing is missing, or
weak, wrong in any way— well, the
fighting doesn't come off ; that's all there
is about it. You can't measure it or
weigh it up, any more than you can
measure a cool breeze on a sultry day,
but you can feel it rippling through the

40 THE MORAL OF THE BOCHE

ranks, just as clearly as you can feel the
little breeze. And God help you if you
feel the absence or the failure of it,
because in fighting there can be no success
without it. But ^eVe never been without
it for a moment in this Push."

(The captain nodded, slowly and empha-
tically, beating time, and underlining his
assent with his cigarette.)

" I tell you this New Army*s got it, for
keeps," continued the Colonel. " If you
start thinking about the balance and
steering of a bicycle you're going to run
into the kerb or something — if you start
thinking. But if you knoWt hand and
mind and nerves all one— why, she goes,
like a charm. Fighting's rather like that ;
plus heat and anger, and din and fury,
and— Fight, you know.

iHii

THE MORAL OF THE BOCHE 41

** I've been in this show since it began,
since the morning of the 1st, you know.
Our chaps have remained much the sr ne
all through, except for one thing. At
the outset they had duty in theur minds,
doing their bit, you know— their job.
Now they've got victory in their blood.
They've got to real grips with the Boche.
The^ *-re foimd he can fight all right.
T -^ e seen he's got to. And they've
fo i.^ he's splendidly equipped. But
they've found something else. They've
found they can beat him. They've found
they're just as well supplied and backed
up, and a bit better. And, above all,
they've found that when it comes to actual
grips, knee to knee work, they can beat
the Boche every time. They've foimd
they are better men and in better heart ;

42 THE MORAL OF THE BOCHE

which they certainly are. That's the only
change so far as they're concerned. That's
the advance they've made. And I can
tell you it's a mighty big one ; bigger
than anything you'll measure in kilo-
metres.

" But it's not so big as the other part
of the advance they've made. They've
accounted for hundreds of thousands of
Boches, killed, wounded and prisoners.
But they've done more, far more. They've
hit every single Boche soldier the German
High Commands have put up against
'em, and hit him very hard, and very
much where he lives. And, for aught I
know, they've hit every other German,
every Hun that lives, whether he's in
uniform or not."

By God, they have ! " interposed the

((

THE MORAL OF THE BOCHE 48

laconic Captain, with several emphatic

nods.

" Double-edged business, you see," con-
tinued the Colonel. " For every ounce of
moral you gain you take at least one

from the enemy."

"One pound, sir; at Mametz, any-
way," said the Captain.

"Well, maybe a pound. My point's
this: the Hun-poor devil !— has been
very carefully taught. The Boches are
regular artists at propaganda. He's been
taught, ever since he scratched into the
Unes we've taken between Thi^pval and
Combles, that the very most the con-
temptible Enghsh could ever do would be
to hold their line, to sit still, until such
time as the All Highest was leady to give
the word to sweep them into the sea.

j..;,/!^'

44 THE MORAL OF THE BOCHE

Offensive movement was quite impossible
for these make-believe soldiers of ours.
We were all shopkeepers who did not
know one end of a rifle from another,
and too soft, anyhow, to stand up for a
moment against real, live Huns, once the
Hun had made up his mind to move.
We were cruel, cowardly devils, who
would torture and kill any worthy German
who was misguided enough to fall into
our hands; but we were not soldiers:
our soldiers had all been killed by the
valiant German Army in the very begin-
ning of the war, and a real offensive was
utterly impossible for us. I've talked to
lots of prisoners, and I assure you that's
the sort of thing they've all been taught,
and that's what they beheved.
" I tell you, it would have been better

THE MORAL OF THE BOCHE 45

for Germany to-day if her leaders had
told fewer damned lies in the past ; better
in a thousand ways. It would have been
a deal better for the Hun to-day if they'd
taught their soldiers that the British
Army was their most deadly and formid-
able enemy. They're beginning to see it
now — too late. Their organisation is so
complete, their subjection of their people
so brutally thorough, and, mark you,
their teaching of their soldiers is so good,
that they'll go on fighting automatically
whatever happens. And they are per-
fectly equipped. The material is all there,
the most formidable fighting machinery
in the world is there ; but the indefinable
something, the thing that enables you to
balance and steer your bicycle so easily
and naturally without thought, the spirit

t^i

46 THE MORAL OF THE BOCHE

you want to feel rippling through your
ranks like a cool breeze — if you are to
win; they've lost that, and we've got it,
got it for keeps.

"People who try to measure the im-
portance of the Push by the groimd gained,
or even by the casualties inflicted, will
fall a long way short in their estimate
of what it all means. The object in war
is the destruction of the enemy, and the
most important asset any enemy has is
his spirit— the moral of his troops. Since
July 1st our New Army has inflicted a
crushing blow upon the enemy's moral.
With the same troops the Boche can
never again achieve the same ends. With
the same troops on our side we can
achieve greater ends. It's partly the
successful bravery and dash, and the

THE MORAL OF THE BOCHE 47

stubborn endurance of our troops, and
the tremendous weight of our munitions,
that have so reduced the Boche moral
on the Somme, and it's partly what the
Boche himself has done, in the matter
of long and careful teaching based on
Ues. Our chaps have let in the light of a
little truth into the Hun's lines. It would
have done 'em no harm if they'd been
fed on truth. But they've been fed on
Ues, and the new diet's upset their
digestion. In my opinion, what's been
accomplished this month would have been
a big gain to the Allies if our casualties
had been five times what they have been.
Napoleon may have been right when he
said an army marched on its stomach;
but, believe me, a modem, educated
twentieth-century army fights on its nerves

48 THE MORAL OF THE BOCHE

and spirit. And that's where we are
immeasurably ahead of the Boche, and a
long way ahead of our position of even
last June."

11!

CHAPTER IV

AN IRISH OFFICER DESCRIBES THE
INDESCRIBABLE

The mellow Irish voice of Lieut. M

was the first to welcome me on board
one of the hospital ships on a recent
fine mommg. One was glad to find this
very popular Platoon Commander a
"walking case." From others one had
ahready heard much of the fine and
dashing work done in the present Push

by the Irish Regiment to which M

belongs. But there were certain other
officers whom it was necessary to see at
once on this particular steamer, and,

Ina.

\m
li

ill

50 DESCRIBING 1:TOESCRIBABLE

knowing of old Lie\it. M 's nimble-

ness with his pen, one bade him sit down
in the ship's companion-way forthwith,
and write out a full, true, and particular
account of the Great Push.

"Give us the realities, real pictures,
something much more informing than any
of your letters I have seen," he was told.
Perhaps one made some other remarks
not conspicuously more reasonable. Here,
at all events, is what he wrote, in indelible
pencil, on the thin pages of an Army
Book 155, the cover of which bore the
stains of French trench dust and En^sh
blood. There may be little here to indi-
cate the dashing gallantry, the dogged,

always cheery bravery of M 's Irish

fighters; but it is worth reading, all the
same, and as for bravery — w^'J, tl re is

DESCRIBING INDESCRIBABLE 51

not a battalion on the British front,
between Thitpval and < lillr ont, which
has not earned rnif rishable .lonoi. ^ and
distincLion since the 1st of July :

" What you sa about my letters home
may be entirely deserved, my dear
Skipper but it is also, I think quite
unavoidable, even apart from the nc( s-
sary censor restricdc >. Let me tell y( a
sir, as one not wholly devoid of pracli^ ..
liter ry xpenence, that what vou re
lot king fo is simply not to be hi ' fb#*
business o' ♦^hia Push— of any otL ;i im-
portant phase of the war, for that matter-
is too big for letters. Bedad, it s i big
lOr literature itself. You won't ^et it on
paper. You can get little bits ; yes, and
much good they will do you. Almost
any one bit, ivritten, is calculated to

ifp DESCRIBING INDESCRIBABLE

mislead the innocent. Why? Because,
taken by itself, it is essentially untrue.
It's only true when seen as it is seen in
reality— one chip in a mosaic. Looked
at all on its lonesome, it is essentially
false.

" Why, if you'U believe me, the Colonel
of the battalion next ours borrowed a
handkerchief from me to blow his blessed
nose with, in the middle of one of the
bloodiest little shows that ever was. * Got
a handkerchief to spare,* he said, in a
casual sort of way. * I used mine, tying
up a fellow's arm, back there.' I gave
Wm my handkerchief, he blew his nose
comfortably, and shoved the rag in his
breeches pocket. * That's better,' says
he, and hurried on with the advance. He
was with the rear company of his battalion.

DESCRIBING INDESCRIBABLE 58

and the way he managed to get m and out
among his men, cheering them on, was
wonderful. He was rather badly wounded
later on, in hand-to-hand fighting with four
Boches who had cornered two of his men,
in their second line. But he's all right, I
think. Men were dropping all round us
in that advance. It was an extraordinarily
bloody business, and had been for thirty
hours and more before that. But one
remains human, you understand. One
tries to get a mouthful of grul: at certain
intervals, and a smoke if possible. And
a man wants to blow his nose on occasion,
even though all hell's let loose, and — weU,
some of us prefer to use handkerchiefs for
that purpose, if we can. You follow me.
But how easy to convey an entirely false
impression, with a picture of a com-

54 DESCRIBING INDESCRIBABLE

iriftfi^^ipg officer borrowing a handkerchief
and blowing his nose in the midst of a hot
advance.

** Suppose I set out to depict something
of the shapeless, grisly horrors of it all.
God knows there's enough oi 'em. What's
the best effect I'll produce, especially on
anyone who's never been out there ? An
effect of shapeless, confused, purposeless
horror. WeU, is the Push no more than
that ? You bet it is. Why, looked at from
one point of view, it is positively beauti-
ful. From the platoon standpoint it may
be a colossal lark or a tangled horror,
whilst, from the High Staff standpoint,
the main impression may well be one of
mathematical nicety, perfectly dovetailed
detail, and smooth- working precision. To
give you an instance : —

DESCRIBING INDESCRIBABLE 55

"The other afternoon I came mighty
near to puking in a warren of Boche
trenches we took outside Longueval.
Nothing much. WeVe all seen worse
things. A little heap of four dead Boches,
They were decently buried an hour later.
It just happened I was about the first of
our people to see this particular shambles.
You know how careful our chaps are, with
their kindly sense of decency. Their
first thought is to cover a dead Boche's
face, give him some decent dignity, even
if they're not able at the moment to give
him decent burial. English, Irish, Scots,
Canadian, Australian, South African — all
the British troops are like that. Well»
they hadn't had time to dean up here,
and these particular Boches had been
done up pretty nasty, as they say, very

56 DESCRIBING INDESCRIBABLE

nasty, indeed. Some of our heavy
stuff must have landed right among
'em. They were in the mouth of a
dug-out.

"Right. Two minutes later I came
upon as homely a Uttle picture as you'd
find in the neighbourhood of any peaceful
Irish or English village : three of our lads
crouching over an old brazier, on which
they were making afternoon tea, if you
please, frying a scrap of bacon and
boiling the water for tea at the same time,
and stirring in their own lovable Irish
blarney with the cooking all the time.
I took it in, and passed on, pondering the
queemess of the whole business. I wasn't
more than sixty or seventy paces away,
when three Boche shells arrived, like a
postman's knock, somewhere close behind.

' Two minutes later I came upon aa homely a little picture as you'd find in the
neighbourhood c I any peaceful village."

DESCRIBING INDESCRIBABLE 57

Jugt three and no more; one of the
flukes of the day.

"Something made me turn back and
go to take another look at the tea-pariy.
One of its members had been instan-
taneously killed, his head smashed to a
pulp. Another had been terribly mauled
about the loins, and was already being
attended to by a couple of stretcher-
bearers who had been resting in a dug-out
within sight of the party, and themselves
had been covered with earth and dust
from the shells. I lent a hand, and they
very soon had the poor chap on his way
down to the dressing station. But I feel
sure one won't ever secf him again. You
know that hopeless yellow pallor. It was

, of No. 7, and the man killed was

, of No. 5. I was back that way

58 DESCRIBING INDESCRIBABLE

r- i;

:•.■

within a quarter of an hour, and there

was 1 of 's own section, you

know, rolling a cigarette in a bit of news-
paper, having just finished the bacon.
His half-filled canteen of tea was along-
side the brazier, which lay now on its side ;
upset, no doubt, when the shells came :

indeed, it was half buried. But told

me the bacon had been saved, and, in some

queer way, the tea. So he had bad ^*s

whack and ^'s, as well as his own,

and as he rolled his cigarette in the scrap
of a Sunday newspaper he was humming
* Keep the home fires burning.'

"My dear Skipper, you can no more
hope to get the^^lsh described for folk
who haven't been out than you can hope
to get the world described, or human hfe
explained, on a postcard. The pen may

DESCRIBING INDESCRIBABLE 59

be
its

ever so mighty, but, believe me, it has
Umitations. What's the Push Uke ? It's
like everything that ever was on land or
sea, and nothmg that ever was as weU.
It's all the struggles of life crowded into
an hour ; it's an assertion of the bed-rock
decency and goodness of our people, and
I wouldn't have missed it, not for all the
gold in London town. I don't want to be
killed, not a little bit. But, bless you,
one simply can't be bothered giving it a
thought. The killing of odd individuals
such as me is so tiny a matter. My God,
Skipper, it's the future of humanity,
countless millions, all the laughing Uttle
kiddies, and the slim, straight young girls,
and the sweet women, and the men that
are to come; it's all humanity we're
fighting for; whether life's to be clean

60 DESCRIBING INDESCRIBABLE

and decent, free and worth having— or a
Boche nightmare. You can't describe it,
but I wouldn't like to be out of it for
long. It's he!l and heaven, and the devil
and the world; and, thank goodness,
we're on the side of the angels — decency,
not material gain— and we're going to

win.

))

CHAPTER V

CLOSE QUABTEBS

Among those who were permitted to board
a certain hospital ship when she berthed

at Southampton was Lieut. H , an

officer of the Territorials, whose Battalion
accompUshed some fine work at Pozidres.
This officer was sent home during the
early part of the Somme offensive, sUghtly
wounded, and will by now have returned
to duty. He had not taken half a dozen
steps on the vessel's deck before he was
saluted by a private of his own BattaUon,
whose jacket was thickly coated with
the grime of later fighting at Pozi^res,

CLOSE QUARTERS

lift

and spattered over with blood, as to its
left shoulder. In the powwow that
followed one tried to get as accurate a
record as possible of this man's own words.
This was about the way of it :

" I found your glasses and stick, sir,
dose to where the stretcher-bearers were
hung up that time; you remember, sir,
that little dead-end where there had been
an old French dug-out. There was a big
gas-gong hanging there, you may remem-
ber, sir, on the haft of a broken pick in
the side of the trench. I gave 'em to

Sergeant , so they wouldn't be lost.

The platoon's in clover now, sir. They
were coming out for rest when I was
taken away. It was after the Pozi^res
scrappin' was over I got my second
woimd — getting back down the new sap

CLOSE QUARTERS

we made. My first was nothing— machine
gun bullet. The platoon's to have two
or three days* rest, I believe, sir. Seems
queer, resting back there in what used
to be the Boche lines, you Vnow, sir.
They're ours now, all ri^, it, *^*cl s<«ne
of the deep dug-outs are fir ' ^ate ; came
through the crumping all right, they did.

That place the *s raided, you know,

sir, in June it was, when the prisoners
started scrappin* on the way back across
No Man's Land. You could see our
chaps lying about there smokin' and usin*
their Tommy's cookers now.

" But we had a hot time all right after
you left, sir. The way it was when you
left, it went on just the same— not a
minute's break— for the rest of the night,
all j day long, and the next night, before

CLOSE QUARTERS

- ;I

any ease-up came. But Captain

said the platoon had done real well, sir,
what there was left of us. You could see
he was pleased, and the Commanding
Officer, sir, he said we was a credit to the
Regiment; so I think you can feel all right
about the platoon, sir. We were moved up
to the right — our Company — after you
left, and were next the Australians, and
I must say they did fight like men, sir;
but not any more than our boys. There
was a bit of racin', like, between us there,
you know, sir, and one of the Anzac
corporals told me we made it easy for
them ; but that must Ve been his blarney,
sir, because there wasn't nothing easy for
anybody in such a hell as that Posddres was.
" I thought at first being dark would
make it better for us, but now I think the

'ii

CLOSE QUARTERS

best. We

to that road at

daylight

last, you know, sur. It seemed we never
could, because of their machine guns;
but we did, and the Boche he had it fair
honeycombed with deep dug-outs and
trenches; but we put the wind up him
properly when we got there, sir, my word
we did, and those what was left was
pretty glad to put their hands up. After
the cruel time they'd given us on the
slope, our boys did want a mix-up at the

end; but Mr. and Captain

they wouldn't have it, sir. They were
runnin' up an' down our line tellin' us

about it, an' Captain , he was near

choking for want of breath; but he
shouted all he could, and kep' all on
putting himself between the Boches with
their hands up and us, an' every one o

CLOSE QUARTERS

they Boches was taken prisoner, and not
a one hurt It's right, too, of course,
when they surrender.

'* When the order came for our platoon
to hold on to that litUe ridge above
where you was hit, sir, I must say I
thought it couldn't be done. We was
all alcHie, you know, sir, an' when they
tried to bring up another platoon they
had to be recalled, for the Boche he
had that groimd so swep' with his type-
writers a swaller couldn't have flown there.
Five separate times the Hun came down
on us; an' when he wasn't charging he
was crumpin* an' machine gunning some-
thing chronic. If you lifted your head
to look just for a second, you got it in
the neck every time. When we got
the rduiforcement up that night from

CLOSE QUARTERS «7

No. 8 and No. 7 there was only one of us
hadn't beoi hit; that was little Joey
GL'een, in my section, you know, sir. But
we were able to keep the Lewis gun
going when they were charging. I think
that's what saved us, really, sir. Couldn't
use it, only when they was charging, or
it would ha' bin Wown out of actic« in
a second. But we peppered 'em aE right
when tl^u- fire Ufted to let 'em ehai^.
A good little gun, sir, thou^ it (fid get
red-hot. I teU you, sir, I felt like blesttn'
the chaps who made it so's it couki
stick the job, an' the chaps that fired k, too,
when they'd been pretty badly wounded.

" You see, sir, we was all right with the
baynit, so long as it was only maybe two
Boches for each of us when they charged.
We could manage that pretty comfort-

CLOSE QUARTERS

able. But if it hadn't bin for the Lewis
I think we'd have had half a dozen Boches
to each one of us every time he charged ;
and I don't think we could 've stood it.
I had a little parapet of three of 'em,
head to tail, in front of me, and I reckon
that sheltered me quite a lot. I've got
their three caps and baynit sheaths here,
that I tied on the back of me belt.

"The fifth time the Boche charged I
stopped one with a bullet just before he
could reach my baynit, and the one
behind him threw down his rifle an'
shouted * Mercy 1' with his hands over
his head. I wouldn't have hurt him;
dkln't want to hurt the beggar, you know,
(bt; though you'd be pretty sick to see
one ®f our boys do the like o' that. But
it seemed he couldn't help himself, an' he

CLOSE QUARTERS

ran right on to my baynit; spitted
himself, he did; I did my very best
to patch up the last one; but it was
no go, he snuffed it, sir, while I was
fixing my field dressing on him. I felt
sorry for that Boche, in a way, seein* I
hadn't wanted to hurt him at all. I
suppose they can't help bein' different
from our chaps, * Mercy, Kamerad ! '
an' aU that."

And here is another little story of a
private soldier who did his bit on the left
of PozJires. A company quartermaster-
sergeant, who was wounded by a stray
bullet at a ration dump well behind the
lines, gave me a note for an officer now
in hospital in London. I found out what
hospital he was in from the R.A.M.C.
staff, and wired asking permission for

CLOSE QUARTERS

the publication of the note I was sendmg
him. His reply was: "Anything you
like that wiU do justice to as fine a lot of
men as any officer ever had." Well, I
don't think this little note does them any
injustice, anyhow.

" I am bringing you the wristlet watch

that was on 's wrist, because the

other batmen told me it was yours, and

only lent to . As I am told you are

somewhere in London, sir, I daresay you
may be seeing his famUy. He was with
the front Une on the left of Pozieres, with
the rest of liis platoon. His mates tell
me his rifle had been knocked out of his
hand. The shell-holes there must have
been hard to cross at the double, in the
dark, with such a heavy fire on, too.
But somehow managed to down his

CLOSE QUARTERS

man all right. When they found him he
had a Roche's bayonet and rifle in his
right hand and his left hand was at the
throat of the Roche he*d killed. He was
lying right across the man, and he had a
bullet through his head. We think a
machine gun bullet got him while he
struggled with the Roche on the groimd,
after sticking him with his own bayonet.
So you see, sir, your batman died pretty
game, hke the rest of our boys who went
West. Rut I am glad to say our casual-
ties have been pretty light on the whole,
when you think of the masses of Roche
dead, not to mention the prisoners. I
hear the Rrigadier is very pleased indeed
w^ the Rattalion's wori^, and that many
in our Company will be mentioned in
dispatdies. The S»ergeant-Major sent his

■ti

CLOSE QUARTERS

best respects, and hopes your wound is
healing well. We have been doing fine
lately in the matter of boots and socks,
and the rations and bath arrangements
have been going like clockwork since you
had it out with , sir.'*

CHAPTER VI

THE devil's wood

"No; don't know anything about
Pozi^res. We're from Delviile Wood, all
three of us. Oh, I don't know. There
may have been worse places, you know ;
but it was a pretty hot shop when we
were there ; not exactly a health resort,
you know, anyhow. If Pozi^res was
worse it must have been quite nasty."

They were all three walking cases,
seated at that moment in the companion
of the Red Cross ship just berthed. Their
bandages were clean, and I have no doubt
their wounds were also clean; but for

THE DEVIL'S WOOD

the rest, all that was visible of those three

subalterns was Well, it had too

much of Delville Wood about it to be
dean. One feels that some of these
tattered, blood-and-soil-stained uniforms
should be preserved precisely as they are
when their wearers step ashore at South-
ampton. No doubt some will be. Proud
mothers and sisters should see to it.
Delville Wood, for example — one example
among many — will remain a tremendous
memory for a good many of our heroes of
all ranks; and, too, a marked point in
history.

** I did get one cigarette, or half of it, as
a matter of fact, in Devil's Wood," said
the fair-haired subaltern whose bloody
tunic had been holed over the right
shoulder-blade, as well as slashed to

■i

THE DEVIL'S WOOD

ribbons in front. " But that was a fluke.
I was in quite a deep hole then. You

remember that place, , just below

the left drive. Mostly, the only ^y to
get a moment's comfort in Devil's Wood
was to get out of it, dead or alive ; wad
there were times when you felt it didn't
much matter which."

" Oh, I say, come off I " protested the
dark boy, who, after a course of Turkish
baths, might have posed for an artist
specialising in cherubic choristers. "It
was never so bad as all that, sir. It's
rather good to have something to chew in
a place Uke that. Seems to mitigate the
stinks, too. I had miik tablets; jolly
good things."

"It did niff a bit, didn't it?" said
number tbjee. "Always used to think dead

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MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART

NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS

STANDARD REFERENCE MATERIAL 1010a

(ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2)

7«

THE DEVIL'S WOOD

Boches were the most satisfactory kind of
Huns; never thought one could see too
many. But there were rather too many
in Delville. Must say I didn't like 'em ;
'specially at night, when a fellow was
crawling about. Mies, too; there were
more flies than one really wanted in
DelviUe."

"Oh, damn! I hate those flies. One
was always thinking about what they'd
lit on last."

" Really ? Did it strike you that way ?
I can't say I had much time for thinking
about the beggars. But I noticed they were
a bit thick. Flies hke blood, you know."

" Do they ? Well, DelviUe Wood's the
place for 'em, then. Plenty blood there—
my aunt ! I saw Boches there bled white ;
the ground all round 'em soaked."

"There's a gcod deal of solid comfort in a Lewis, if you can find
a decent shell-hole handy."

mmm

THE DEVIL'S WOOD

"Hmph! Our own, too. By God I
that northern strip was a hot shop. How
many machme guns do you reckon the
Boche had there? Like a typewriting
shop, wasn't it ? "

"But it was rather jolly when Fatty
got our httle Lewis up in front there,
wasn't it? Made the rifles seem a bit
slow. There's a good deal of solid comfort
in a Lewis, you know, if you can find a
decent shell-hole handy. I liked the red
spit of it m the night. Pretty comforting
that when you heard the Boches creeping."

" That was one of the things about the
Wood; you never could move in it without
making some row."

"Row! But did you ever hear any-
thing like the row our heavies made in
that last hurricane burst ? I was trying

mmmmm

THE DEVIL'S WOOD

to explain to my sergeant just what we
were going to do, when the curtain lifted,
and, 'pon my word, though I yelled in
his ear, he couldn't hear me."

** Fine, that, wasn't it ? the scramble
when it lifted. God 1 it was a great
fight, that last bit. Our chaps had their
teeth set then, all right. One of my
section commanders was wounded in three
places before we started ; but he went
like an absolute madman in that scramble
up the httle ridge. Never saw an3^hing
like it in my life. His face was covered
with blood, he'd got no coat, and his
shirt had been all torn away in putting
field dressings on him. Nobody could
keep up with him. I tried hard, but
he got ahead of me, and he downed
two big Boches in that shallow trench

mmmm

THE DEVIL'S WOOD

as though they'd been thistles —just
smothered them, he did ; and then— then
he got it fairly in the neck. Bomb burst
right at his feet; laid out three other
chaps at the same time. He was a man,
that chap. I got a bit of his own back for
him. It was a Boche sergeant shied that

bomb at ; but he'll never throw

another. I beg pardon. No, no; I
hadn't got a rifle then. But I had my
little truncheon though, and it was good
enough. Oh, I don't think he was the
surrendering kind. Anyway, he didn't

get the chance. was one of my

own section commanders, you see, and
one of the best. Yes, I made quite
sure about that particular Boche. He
wasn't a bad sort ; put up a good enough
fight."

THE DEVIL'S WOOD

" Aye, aye, a queer business. You
know there were some real brave things
done at the end of that show. They
can't give D.C.M.'s to everyone, you
know ; but, honestly, all those men earned
it, just as well as any of the chaps who
get it."

'* Of course they did. So do thousands
every day in this Push. Thousands of
'em every day are doing bigger, finer
things than lots of things men got the
V.C. for in the old days."

(The ** old days " are, of course, the
days before '14, to these young veterans —
God bless them 1)

" Yes, but look here ; what I was
thinking of was the lot of things that
nobody at all ever knows about; not
even a man's own mates. Now, look

mfmmmm

THE DEVIL'S WOOD

here. You know we had to fall back a
bit, once, from that shallow trench at
the top. No, I mean after we'd been in
it, and thought we'd got it. Yes. Well,
we fell back for— oh, it must 've been
',. -minutes, the tune I mean, and a lot
I ^oches came up along those com-
uiui-lcating saps, and it ahnost looked
once as though we wouldn't get it back

again."

"Never looked any other way, I
thought. Can't for the life of me see how
the devil we ever did get it. Damn it t
It was obviously impossible to get it,
because of those machine guns."

" I know. Well, I got my dose in the
trench, you know. When I saw you all
falling back I tried like the devil to get
out. I was in quite a deep bit, alongside

THE DEVIL'S WOOD

that traverse with the big tree on it,

where was killed. I nearly broke

blood-vessels trying to get out; but it
was no go. My shoulder was giving
me hell, and the right arm wouldn't
work at all. Well, you know, I'd rather
have been sent West altogether. I always
did feel I'd rather anything than be
taken by the Boches. I had my revolver,
of course ; but I'm not much good with
my left b Jid. Ten to one they'd have
got me ahve.

** I could just see over the edge, and
I was cursing my luck, when I saw a chap
deliberately stop, turn round and look
at me, and sort of weigh up his chances.
He was falling back with the rest of our
lot, you know. Just then a Boche machine
gun opened as it seemed right along-

THE DEVIL'S WOOD

side me. It was really just round the big
traverse. *That settles it,' I thought.
'I'm done now.' And it did settle it,
too. That chap I'd seen, who'd evidently
decided once that it wasn't good enough,
he altered his mind when the typewriter
began. Down on his hands and knees
he went, and scuttled all the way back
to where I was, like a lizard. He fairly
gasped at me ; no breath, you know.

" * On me back, sir,' says he.

"And, soni;ihow, he hauled me out
and slung me over his back. I fell off
three separate times while he was scramb-
ling down the slope with me, and three
separate times he stopped, in all that
fire, and fixed me up again. And then I
felt him crumple up under me, and at
the same time I got— this; through the

THfi DEVIL'S WOOD

left arm. I roUed dear and looked at
his face. 1*11 never forget his face, but
he had no coat or cap, and I didn't
know his battalion. His forehead was
laid open and bleeding fast. I dragged him
behind a stump and laid liim with his
head on my haversack. Then I scrambled
out to find a stretcher-bearer for him.
But I got caught up in our advance
then. You know what it is. And I went
on, thinking I'd find my man after. Glad
I went in a way, because I had three
bombs a wounded corporal gave me,
and it was easy lobbing them with my
left at close quarters. By gad, I lobbed
'em all right; nearly lobbed myself to
Kingdom come, too. But those bombs
did their job all right, before we cleared
the trench. It was hours after, before I

: »■'■'

THE DE HL'S WOOD

could get a man to help me look for that
good chap who*d dragged me out, and we
never found him — ^never a sign of him.
But to do what he did, thinking it out,
too, in all that hell — ^whv, many r chap*s
got the V.C. for no more than hat, I
think."

"Yes, and there v> :>e dozv^ns of things
like that in Delville alone."
Same all along the front."
Right through the Push."
I believe it is, *pon me word."

** I'm dead sure of it."

" Oh, I tell you, as the men say : * The
Army of to-day's all rigfU I * "

" London train ? Yes, that's me,
orderly. Come on, boys. I beg your
pardon 1 Good-bye, sir ! "

((

CHAPTER VII

THE COCKNEY FIGHTER

Among the wounded who arrived recently
mt Soutibampton one found both officers
and men whose experiences since July 1st
may be described as unique in all the
world's history of war. These are men
who " went over the sticks " at 7.80 a.m.
on July 1st, and have been fighting at
one point or another in the present great
offensive north of the Somme ever since.
There are, of course, magnificent soldiers
in the French Army who have been
through an even longer period of fighting
at Verdun; and the fighting before

THE COCKNEY FIGHTER 87

Verdun was probably the most intense
recorded in history up to that time.
But, as a French officer stated only the
other day, after retummg woimded from
the south of P^'onne : " The British part
in the Somme offensive has been Verdun
magnified, Verdun on a bigger scale."
Another French officer has stated that
the artillery fire in some portions of this
line has been " more terrible, more intense,
more devastating than the worst seen at
Verdun."

When one carefully thinks out what
the day-to-day and nig^t-to-night fighting
has been between Authille and Guillemont
since July 1st, and then comes to talk to
a soldier who has actually been through
the whole of it, one marvels that any
ordinary twentieth century human being

88 THE COCKNEY FIGHTER

could possibly survive such a month so
spent. One talked with many, on the
landing stage, who not only have sur-
vived it, but can jest about it, and talk
with indomitable cheeriness about getting
back to it "before the show's over."

Pte. A , of the — th , will

retain always a prominent place in my
gallery of such wounded heroes, who have
not the faintest notion that there is
anything heroic about them. He is a
Cockney of the Cockneys. I have met his
like in the ranks of the old Army, the
Territorials, and the New Armies; but
never, certainly, one who has known such

months as Pte. A has just Uved

through ; never before this year.

" Fed up ? Wot, ahr boys fed up,
sir? Not likely 1 Wy, we're just beginnin'

THE COCKNEY FIGHTER 89

to like it. But I bet Mister Boche is
gettin' a bit fed up. Least, some er them
as I saw, they was; right up to the
bloomm' neck, as ye might say, sir."

But I feel there is something terribly
inadequate about my attempt to repro-
duce Pte. A 's rycy vernacular ; also

I cannot hope to convey on paper any
conception of the incorrigibly humorous
devilry in the man's mobile face. Brave 1
I would say he was braver than a stoat ;
and that may mean something to anyone
who has known a stoat defy him and his
stick on a footpath; who has been
deliberately challenged, as I have been,
to mortal combat with a stoat over^the

body of a crippled field mouse. Pte. A

got his quietus in Delville Wood. Three
separate times before, after July 1st, he

90 THE COCKNEY FIGHTER

was stij^vtly wounded, and received all the
attention he would accept at; advanced
Md dressing stations. In Delvffle Wood
he went on fighting for a long time with
considerable wounds in left shoulder and
arm, and only gave out when rendered
pMfectly helpless by a smashed anlde
and two slight head wounds.

** To *ear the wy they talks abaht that
Devil's Wood you'd think there wuz
something wrong abaht the bloomin' plice.
Per me, I like the in-an'-aht dose work,
I do; better'n this bloomin* extended
order work in the open, wiv the bloomin'
typewriters clack-clackin' till you cam't
'ear yourself speak. An' they cam't 'ardly
'elp Wttin' of yer, neither. Same's it was
at Monterbang an' comin' up to Longy-
val. No, give me the in-an'-aht work, I

He went on fighting for a Icng time with considerable wouncU
in his left shoulder."

IHE COCKNEY FIGHTER 91

sy, every time. You do git a bit er fun
fer yer money in a pUce like Devfl's Wood.
I've done a bit er scrappin' down at
Wonderland, I *ave, an' when my orftcer
give me a Utile trench dagger, wot fitted
on me left 'and like a knucklc-dust^-'e
'ad two er three of 'em, 'e 'ad— wy, I
tell you, it was a Utile bit uv oilright

fer me.

" There's suthin' to keep a man amused
abaht that sorter fightmg. Not Ukc this
op«i oMer work, where you never knows
'oo 'its yer. I didn't arf walk into them
Boches when we rushed 'em in the Wood ;
not arf, I didn't. 'Time, genehnenl' I
useter sy. Much I cared abaht their
toastin' forks once I could git dose in.
You let me get close in, sir, same's we did
in Devil's Wood, time an' time again, an^

82 THE COCKNEY FIGHTER

I'll back meself to serve ye up Boches
fast as you can open oysters.

"No, IVe got no fault to find with
DevU's Wood. If only a R.E. fatigue
party could er got in there first an' done
a bit uv a clean up, as ye might say;
got some uv the wood an* wire an* rubbish
an* that outer the wy, an* jest levelled
it up er bit— wy, you couldn't *ve asked
fer a nicer pHce fer a scrap.

"Wot do I think uv Mister Boche ?
Oh, *e's orlright once yer get ter know
*is little tricks— the blighter. *E*s got
some toler'bly dirty little tricks; but
'e*s a sticker, ye know, sir. Yuss, *e*s a
sticker, orlright, 'specially with a machine
gun. *E don't count once you can land
*im one on the point er the jaw. The
sight o' steel makes *im proper sick.

THE COCKNEY FIGHTER 98

You gotter be quick as a flash once you
get up to 'im, or 'e'll up with *is *ands,
an* then you mustn't touch the beggar,
although you know bloomin' well that if
you 'appen to stumble, or give 'iin arf
a chamce, 'e'll stick yer when you're
not looking — almost the only time 'e
will, that is. But 'e's a pretty good
soldier at shootin' ranges.

" The Push ? Oh, the Push is orWght,
sir. Tike er bit er time, ye know, to
flatten 'im out proper; but 'e's goin' to
be flattened orlright; not arf, 'e ain't
Did I get any sleep last month ? Lor'
bless ye, yes, sir. I can't get on wivout
me sleep. We used to doss it in shell-
holes ; any ole plice. Soon get used to
that. 'Ad me tea, too, most artemoons,
I did. Bit uv a relish with it, too, when

04 THE COCKNEY FIGHTER

we'd got in a Boche trench. I'll say
that fer the Boches, their dug-outs is
prime. Gen'rally always find a bit ep
suthin* tasty in a Boche dug-out, an' if
yer strike a orficep's dug-out it's a Lord
Mayor's banquit fer certin."
It is impossible for me to begin to do

justice to Pte. A on paper. I wish

he could meet some of our literary masters
of Cockney humour, for, though what I
am able to quote may but faintly indicate
it, men hke this are perfectly wonderfiil
in their attitude toward the great things
they have seen and done. This man—
who is only one among thousand*— has
moved and lived and had his hourly
being night and day for many weeks
past in a nearer approach to the old
writers* dreams of heU than anything

I i

THE COCKNEY FIGHTER 95

ever previously seen on earth. Not for
an hour in all that time has he been
out of reach of gun-fire, or away from xhe
maniacal din, the murderous fury of it
all. He is now pretty badly cut about,
and has lost a lot of blood. But he
hardly ever opens his mouth without
emitting a jest of some kind; he talks
cheerily of getting back into the inferno,
and very probably wiU be back there
before very many weeks have passed.
As for Delville, which several officers
have told me was the most awful and
bloody shambles of the 'hole terrific
series, he says that bai :;«i untidiness,
so to say, " you couldn't 've asked fer a
nicer plice fer a scrap I "

If the Kaiser could produce many such
soldiers as this one — ^well, the war would

96 THE COCKNEY FIGHTER

last a very long time. Myself, I greatly
doubt if the AU Highest could produce
one such among all his legions. And I
have talked with many scores of just
this type, and hundreds of other types
as fine in theur different ways, during the
past few weeks alone.

It is to be remembered always that
this is the spirit they show when wounded,
and straight from the most exhausting
kind of fighting ever seen, and a long
tiring journey. Heaven help the Hun
who meets them when, with aU the
knowledge they have gleaned of his little
ways, thcjr re-enter the fight at the end
of comfortable weeks of good living and
recuperation 1

CHAPTER VIII

"we don't count wounds in my
regiment "

Standing close beside the gangway of
the first hospital ship to be berthed at
Southampton during o.:e I'ecent day was
a tall, fair-haired sergeant, who came to
attention and saluted, like a guardsman
on parade, though his left arm was slung
and his tunic in tatters. The dust which
covered his ragged jacket was caked on it,
by darker, thicker stuff than water: the
familiar, unmistakable stain which covers
so much khaki on hospital ships; the
stain that tells you a man has given freely

fit

98 " WE DON'T COUNT WOUNDS "

of the life within him in the service of
King and country.

There was nothing in these details to
hold one's attention to the sergeant;
for these are external characteristics shared
by most of our new arrivals at South-
ampton. But in some indescribable way
the sergeant was trim and smart, though
bandaged and clothed in rags that were
muddy and bloody. His smartness, then,
must have gone a good way beneath the
surface. It certainly was marked. I
waited a few minutes to chat with this
N.C.O., and it happened that the
first question I put to him took this
form : —

" Well, Sergeant, how do you think the
New Army is shaping ? "

There was something at once humorous,

iMM

" WE DON*T COUNT WOUNDS " 99

modest, and very pleasing about his
flickering half-smile.

"The New Army, sir? Oh, I think
the New Army's all right, sir. Doing
fine, I should say. Master Boche finds
'em a pretty tough nut to crack, I think.
I don't think there's much the matter
with the New Army, sir, from the little
I've seen of it."

" Why, haven't you been out long,
then. Sergeant ? "

Again that flickering, modest, humorous
smile.

" I was in the retreat from Mons, sir ;
woimded there, and hit again at Loos,
sir. This is my tiiird trip home in a
ho^ital ship. But, of course, it's all
different now."

" Then you are of the old Army ? "

100 " WE DON'T COUNT WOUNDS "

■ /

I -
I?

" Fourteen years' service, sir, come next
month."

" H'm ! When you come out of hospital
this time you'll wear three gold stripes,
sergeant."

The smile was perfectly radiant this
time.

" We don't count wounds in my Regi-
ment, sir."

It would be most difficult to explain
how much this sergeant impressed me, or
what was conveyed by his smile and his
tone. There was, for example, a kind of
caress in his voice when he used those
two simple words " my Regiment," which
I am quite sure cannot be described.

Some hoiurs later, on another ship, I
had some little talk about it with an
officer of the Regular Army, a captain

WE DON'T COUNT WOUNDS " 101

whose majority cannot be far from him,
I apprehend. He has seen service in
Gallipoli, as well as in France, and been
wounded in both theatres of war.

" Odd you should mention that," he
said. " I've been thinking of that very
point : the New Army and the Old. I
put in two days and a night at Havre, you
know, on the way from the front, and
some kind soul has supplied the place
I was in with stacks of newspapers. I
read papers of every day for a month ;
all about the present offensive. I was
awfully glad to see the public have been
getting lots of information about the way
the Service Battalions have distinguished
chemselves. I think they deserve every
word of praise they've got, and more.
They really are wonderful. It's a great

102 " WE DONT COUNT WOUNDS

I ,

)

achievement for men to be so steady in
attack, after so short a training. Their
officers have done splendidly, too, and it's
good that the public at home should learn
something about it. I very much doubt
if any other country in the world could
have accomplished anything approaching
to it, in the time. Tradition counts for
an enormous deal, you see, in any army ;
in the training and the fighting men make
soldiers of one another, you know, given
the tradition and the atmosphere. And
in the absence of these things to have
accompUshed what this country has
accomplished in the New Army — ^well,
it's a wonderful tribute to the qualities
of the race. Nobody knows so well as a
regular soldier what a wonderful miracle
it is."

** WE DONT COUNT WOUNDS " 108

I forget just how my next question was
worded, but I know it provoked frank
and hearty laughter from the captain.

" Oh, Lord, no I " he said. " No need
to tell the public about the Regulars.
They don't need any telling about regi-
ments that have been fighting in different
parts of the world for centuries. The
world hardly wants telling at this time of
day that Tommy is an invincibly fine
soldier — ^the very best. He proved it
such a long time ago, and he's been
proving it ever since. But it's only right
that our people should be given all the
facts ut the New Army. It had to
prove itself; and, begad, it's done it
magnificently. I don't think there can be
a shadow of doubt about that. But I do
think it's only right and fair that the

I f

104 '* WE DONT COUNT WOUNDS "

facts which prove it should be made
public. Everybody who*s been in the
show knows it; but the world ought to
know it, too. As for us — ^well, they know
all about us, don't they?

" Of course, it's a mistake to suppose
that we have two separate fighting forces —
Old Army and New Army. It irn't that
at all. The Service Battalions, as you
know, are mostly battahons of regiments
whose records were fine records before
the German Empire was ever thought
of. Some of 'em have been lucky enough
to get a certain nimiber of Regular
N.C.O.'s, and some a few Regular officers.
Some have been luckier than others in
the matter of the number of ex-Regulars
they got in their ranks. Those things are
a great help, of course, in the training.

The old regular senior N.C.O. is a finely finished production.

I !

'M;

i i

'i-

A it i

I ■ I

;( !

" WE DON'T COUNT WOUNDS " 105

as well as in the campaign. The old
Regular senior N.C.O. or warrant officer
is a finely finished production, as you
know; a pretty valuable centre of influ-
ence. There are battalions and companies
in the New Army that owe an enormous
deal to a single Regular sergeant-major,
and there are Service battalions with
retired Regular officers commanding, whose
training has made them equal to any
line battalion in the world.

"Then, of course, there are plenty of
Regular battalions with hardly a score
of the old hands left in the ranks. They
have done theiir bit from first to last, and
done it so well that they have had to be
remade many times over from drafts.
But the Regiment never dies, you know.
The root of the matter is there all the

' If

! !■
i

(■i

106 " WE DON'T COUNT WOUNDS »'

time, and the surviving officers and
N.C.O.*s work pretty hard to prevent
any falling off in its quality. I think,
perhaps, that's really the whole thing,
isn't it ? A strictly non-military nation
has, in an extraordinarily short space of
time, built up a huge Army from the very
closely pollarded stem of a little one
which — ^well, perhaps the arch-Hun did
make a bit of a mistake when he described
it as * contemptible ' as well as little.
Its record wasn't exactly contemptible,
was it ? The root is the old root, and the
present big tree seems to me to have
the old fibre running all through it. Can't
very well give it higher praise, can you ?
And, mind you, it deserves the highest
praise that can be given, as I think the
Boche is beginning to realise."

; ti

CHAPTER DC

A REVEREND CORPORAL

The last wounded man I talked with on
the landing-stage at Southampton on a
certain night was in hospital away up
north next morning. His two wounds
were both clean and slight, and within a
week or so he would, no doubt, be enjoy-
ing sick leave in his own Border-country
juDme. Wherever he is, he will, I think,
be an influence for good; and — ^yes, I
am sui'e of it — a greater influence for
good than he could have been if he had
played no part in this war.

He is a corporal now, and his name

107

n^'

= «

\\t

108 A REVEREND CORPORAL

was in his battalion orderly room for a
lance-sergeant's stripes when he stopped
the bullets that gave him his break for
rest and recuperation in Blighty. Up till
some time early in 1915 he was a minister
of the Gospel, newly ordained. When
the end of the war comes he will resume
his sacred calling, and one would like to
hear him preach. I am very sure he
will not have lost anything as preacher,
teacher, or minister by his service in
another capacity. A man does not lose
by the teaching of discipline and the
experience of shoulder-to-shoulder com-
radeship in the trenches with men who
voluntarily offer their lives in the defence
of all that every good man holds sacred.

This corporal's face and neck and hands
are of a rich old saddle brown, and his

A REVEREND CORPORAL 109

eyes, despite the weariness in them, have
a light which it is good to see in the eyes
of a man. He knows a very great deal
more about many things, including life
and British human nature, than he knew
eighteen months ago, and he has found
it all well worth fighting for; dying for,
if need be, as he has seen many of his
comrades die.

" I was just north of Ovillers, where the
new line joins the old, you know. We
are practically at right angles to our
old lines there, you know ; looking north
now instead of east, and in our rear you
can walk about and take your ease in the
warren that stood for death to us before
July 1st. And what a warren ! Round
about Ovillers and La Boiselle, I mean.
It's marvellous to think those lines could

110 A REVEREND CORPORAL

ever have been taken. I am not a bit
surprised the Hun thought them im-
pregnable. Anyone would, when you come
to look over them. Even now, when they
have been poimded out of all recognition
by our heavies, you'd think such a net-
work could be held against any possible
advance. The Boche thinks the same
about Thi^pval, you know ; that no power
on earth will ever take it from him,
because he's made a fortified arsenal of
it. But there's a force behind our chaps
that he can never have in this war, and
I doubt if his generals make any allow-
ance for that.

** And yet, you know, that force, what-
ever you like to call it, will presently
smash Thi^pval just as surely as it smashed
Ovillers and La Boiselle and the other

" There's a force behind our chaps that the Boche will never have in this war.'

A REVEREND CORPORAL 111

impregnable strong points. I'm no ex-
pert, of course ; but it seems queer to me
that these highly trained people who run
the Boche machine should show the igno-
rance they do of everything they can'^
weigh a measure and touch with their
fingers, it's been the same all through
the war, from the very first outrage in
Belgium. So far, the Boche would seem
to be incapable of grasping the existence
of anything that cannot be turned out
of a foimdry.

" Of course I know the foundry has
played a tremendous part in the war, and
I know the bravest heart can't go on
beating after you've smashed it with a
Boche shell. But that doesn't alter my
point, really. Shells alone would, I think,
have left places like La Boiselle and

112 A REVEREND CORPORAL

Ovillers what the Boche thought them:
impregnable. But behind and over and
above our shells— without which we can,
I know, do nothing — our fellows have
something which the Boches have not got
in this war, or in their nation as at present
constituted, and, beUeve me, it's that
something that's winning the war for us
and our Allies.

" Oh, I'm no authority, of course. But,
just as it's their job to know all about
tactics and munitions, so it was mine, and
is, to know a little about men's souls or
spirits ; to try hard to learn about them,
anyhow; to study them all I can. I've
been studying more closely since I * joined
up ' than I ever did before, and the study
has brought me two certainties, that the
German Army and the German nation

A REVEREND CORPORAL 118

have set themselves a perfectly hopeless
task, and that they cannot possibly pre-
vaU against us, and that the Allies will
presently beat the Germans absolutely
to a standstill, more than anything else
because of elements at work on our side
which Germany does not recognise or
understand, and of which her magnificent
organisation has taken no account at all.

" Am I preaching ? Forgive me. It
boils down to this : their machinery for
destroying our flesh and bones is pretty
good, though I think we have mastered
that this year, thanks to our unarmed
annies in the home workshops. But they
have devised nothing adequate to put
up against the spirit of our armies in the
field ; nothing adequate at all. And yet,
mark my words, that it is that is going to

'If*

114 A REVEREND CORPORAL

carry us through their lines. It's that
that is going to enable me to smoke my
pipe in the midst of their fortified arsenal
at Thi^pval when I get back. I'm just
as certain of it as I am that I smoked a
pipe the night before I was hit, in the
middle of what, in June, was such an
utterly deadly place for us as the chalky
trench walls beyond Mash Valley, between
Ovillers and La Boiselle."

Whether or not there was logic in his
words, there was a conviction behind
them which I found most compelling.
(That is one reason why I want to hear
this corporal preach after the war.) I
asked for further details as to this asset
of ours against which the Hun has made
no provision. " Tell me what this spirit
is," I asked.

A REVEREND CORPORAL 115

** Ah ! I'm afraid I can't do that. I'm
not so very sure that anyone could.
You can't measure it, remember ; and it's
not made in factories. It would be so
easy to use words that would mislead
you, words that might mean one thing
for me and another for you. And I
don't really think that any words could
do justice to it, anyhow. It is there, all
right, I can assure you. Men cannot
march smilingly into certain death with
a cheer on their lips without it. Specially
primed men may be driven anywhere,
as we have seen Boches driven ; but our
chaps are not primed, and never driven.
Yet the Boche cannot make them waver.

" No, it is beyond me to describe it.
I think, perhaps, one must live among
our fellows in the trenches to under-

Ill

116 A REVEREND CORPORAL

stand it rightly. Our officers know all
about it. The Boche fights because he's
got to fight. Our chaps fight because —
well, the fact that as soldiers they have
got to fight is the least of the things
that make them fight. For one thing,
they know as well as I do that we are
going to win. They came forward volun-
tarily to fight, because they know we ought
to win ; and that for our sort of people,
for people holding the sort of beliefs
the British people hold, life wouldn't
be worth living, ever, if we didn't win.

" But I feel that the words I am using
are quite futile — such little shadows be-
side the thing itself. I fancy the public
wiU get as near understanding it as any-
body can without living in the trenches
and seeing the spirit at work among the

A REVEREND CORPORAL 117

men, if they just think carefully over
what our men have been going through
on that front, what they have been
doing since July and how they have
done it — cheering, singing, shouting — how
gladly they have done it. Then let the
pubhc ask themselves how and why.
The most of the men of the New Armies
have no military tradition behind them;
had never handled a gun till they * joined
up.' Yet they have faced bigger things
than any veterans ever faced before, and
faced them steadily; ah, so steadily;
seeing it all very clearly, and fearing it
not one scrap, though they have forced
mad fear into the highly trained troops
facing them again and again. That is
because they have something that you
cannot make in foundries ; that you can-

118 A REVEREND CORPORAL

not even give by training. Words won*t
explain it, but quiet thought may. I
could . . -e it a name the Church would
recognise. But let's just say they know
their cause is good, as they very surely
do. The Germans may write on their
badges that God is with them, but our
lads— they know"

CHAPTER X

BROTHERS OF THE PARSONAGE

There have been busy phases of the
day*s work at Southampton, when two
of the green and white hospital ships
have been lying alongside the stage to-
gether, both with full passenger lists of
wounded from the Somme. On one such
occasion the livirg freight of the smaller
boat was still being discharged when I
went on board the big one. There one
was talking with one of the cot cases,
whose foot had been rather badly knocked
about by a German bomb. In his pleasure
in the fact that it was his foot, and not

l2 119

120 BROTHERS OF THE PARSONAGE

his head, which caught the more malevo-
lent portions of that particular bomb,

Lieut. R seemed to think it was

rather an advantage than otherwise to lose
a toe or two. "Nothing to write home
about, anyhow," was his way of putting it.

One had occasion to ask his name, this
high-spirited fellow who thought himself
so extraordinarily lucky to have nothing
more than a temporarily smashed foot.
And then I turned back to another page of
my note-book.

"Why, there's another man of your

name," I said, " on board the , lying

just astern here."

You don't mean to say it's Teddy ? "
" Don't know, I'm sure. Here's the

name, look, Second-Lieut. E. S. R ,

of the — th s."

BROTHERS OF THE PARSONAGE 121

Well, J'U be jiggered if it isn't Teddy.
I say — you must excuse me, you know ;
but that's my elder brother. He must
have been in this show, too. They only
came out about Christmas time, you
know, and I never knew ■.-re his brigade
was. How was he hit ? How is he ?
Is he a cot case or a walker? How'd he
seem ? Does he look all right ? What
an extraordinary lark ! Fancy Teddy
being — what ? "

Five minutes later one had secured
permission from the kindly R.A.M.C. Staff
Officer for ** Teddy " — the senior in years
was the junior in rank, I noticed — to
leave his ship and come on board the
other vessel till his train was ready. It
was rather pleasant to watch the meeting
of the two brothers who had been in

122 BROTHERS OF THE PARSONAGE

France for eight months without either
knowing precisely where the other was.
" Teddy " was a " walking case " as it
happened) so that there was no diffi-
culty about his getting to his brother.
He had been hit when fighting beside
the Bapaume road, close to Pozi^res ;
his brother, on the terrible northern
slopes of Delville Wood, above Lon-
gueval.

One rather wished one had a phono-
graph in which to record some of the
talk that passed between these two sons
of an English country parson who had
last met, during their training period in
1915, in a sequestered south-country
rectory, and had since lived through many
months of strenuous trench warfare, and
some weeks of such strife as the world

BROTHERS OF THE PARSONAGE 128

has never seen before, all between the
Ancre and the Somme.

Both have known winter in water-
logged trenches and abysmal mud ; both
have gasped and spat from the choking
thuist that comes to a fighting man
during July and August heats on a chalky
soil, when he struggles in blinding dust
and dense choking smoke over groimd
which has been pulverised in almost every
yard of it by bursting high explosive and
rending steel. They had a good deal to
say, and some of it was not very coherent
or easy for the outsider to follow; both
were in the same tearingly high spirits.
Men wounded and broken in the war!
It was hard to believe it, as one watched
their sparkling eyes and the constant
flash of white teeth against dark, sun-

124 BROTHERS OF THE PARSONAGE

i-*r

burnt skin, whUe they laughed in sheer
gaiety of heart. Wounded, perhaps, and
one felt that would not affect them for
long; but these EngUsh lads are not so
easily broken. There is a good deal of
the bom fighter in them, despite our non-
military traditions; and, for one who
knows the trenches in northern France,
it is striking evidence of enduring virility
and invincible good-heartedness to find
men so amazingly debonair, and in the
towering spirits of hohday schoolboys,
after eight or nine months spent in the
fighting Une between Fricourt and Arras.

This is a specimen of the sort of verbal
battledore and shuttlecock which went
on between the junior superior officer
in the cot and the senior of lower rank
who was a " walking case."

BROTHERS OF THE PARSONAGE 125

" Fancy you, you secretive old beggar,
being here, and I never even knew you
were in the show."

"Well, what about you, if you come
to that. You got it in the foot, eh?
What is it— shrap ? "

"No, bomb. Yours in the arm — ^you
old blighter ? "

" Shoulder ; in up here, near the collar-
bone, and out through the shoulder-blade.
Machine gun bullet; clean as can be.
I'll be clear in a week or two. What the
deuce d'you want to get a bomb in the
foot for ? What were you doing ? "

" I was jolly lucky, I can tell you. We
were rushing their last trench in the
Delville Wood ; weren't more than a
dozen paces in front of it. I fell, regular
somersault, in a shell-hole, at the very

126 BROTHERS OF THE PARSONAGE

moment one of their bombs went off
right alongside me. Head down in the
hole, safe, you see; heels up, and one
of 'em got caught. But my orderly got
the Boche who shied it; got him for
keeps, I can tell you. First Boche he*d
killed, I think, and, begad, he made no
end of a mess of the chap. Insisted on
giving me the fellow's helmet. Here it
is, look ; though, as I told him, it was
more up to me to be giving him some-
thing. He seemed to think it was a gross
kind of insubordination for the Boche to
have shied a bomb at his officer. Nice
boy. Mother keeps a little shop o^ sorts

in . We must get the mater to look

her up. So you were up there by
Pozieres ? "

" A bit south-west of it."

BROTHERS OF THE PARSONAGE 127

" Hot stuff, wasn't it~Pozidres ? "

*' So so ; not a rest cure, you know.
I've got a helmet, too ; but I can beat
you, me boy. Mine's an officer's — a real
live Boche officer ; least, he was live
enough then, with a sword-stick of all
things, and I've got his sword-stick, too."

" No, Teddy ! What a lark I Did you
really get the beggar ? "

" Well, he got me first ; punctured my
left hand here, you see. I'd lost rny
revolver long before ; but I'd got a Boche
rifle and bayonet — ^pretty good one, too.
You'd have laughed to see the duel ;
like a Naval and Military Tournament
show, you know — sword versus bayonet.
I daresay he was a swordsman. Lots of
these Huns are, you know. If so, I
*spect my ignorance of the game put him

128 BROTHERS OF THE PARSONAGE

off. I simply rushed him, you know;
got him clean through the chest. Queer
thing! He was the only Boche oflScer
I've seen, and we've been in front ever
since the 1st."

** I know. They've been lying remark-
ably doggo. Getting a bit short, I sup-
pose— else they've lost their appetite.
How'd your men do ? "

"Finest platoon in the New Army
bar none ! "

" Oh, come ; I swear they're not that ;
can't be. I've got the best; everyone in
our lot knows that. But yours were
good, were they ? "

" Good 1 my dear chap, there isn't a
man in the platoon that oughtn't to have
the V.C. ; not a blessed one."

*' H'm I So yours were the same, eh ?

BROTHERS OF THE PARSONAGE 129

Mine were absolutely perfect. I knew
they were fine, but honestly I'd no idea
how fine till we got into Delville. Honest
Injim, a man ^;an't help loving 'em."

" I know. It's queer, isn't it ? the
way you feel that. You really can't
help loving 'em — dammem I Seen the
papers ? "

" Saw some last night. All this business
about the third year, and Big Willie
trying to keep their spirits up. Notice
the way the Boches try to make httle
of the Push. We've gained such a few
miles, they say. Pretty useful miles,
though, to the top of the ridge."

". Oh, besides ; it's not only the ground,
you know. See what it really means.
They've taught their people the EnffJish
couldn't really stand against 'em, ict

f.-;

180 BROTHERS OF THE PARSONAGE

alone advance. How could we advance
even one mile on selected ground they
wanted so badly, and get thousands of
'em prisoners, and regular piles of 'em
dead — ^if we were so contemptible ? They'll
find it hard to go on pumping in the
same kind of tosh to any of their troops
that have been in this show. Never get
them to believe it any more."

" No, by Jove I They'll go on fighting,
of course. They jolly well can't help
that. And their a'tillery and machine
guns will go on playing merry hell, no
doubt ; but I think the wind's up 'em ;
I do really, Teddy. I know it was at
Delville ; fairly up 'em."

One slipped away at about that stage
and had a Uttle talk with some of the
kindly R.A.M.C. people, with the result

BROTHERS OF THE PARSONAGE 181

that the brothers did not go away by
different trains, but were booked for the
same hospital, which I hope they will
very soon leave together, for a few weeks
of holiday recuperation in the south-
country rectory. Our Army is full of
lads like these, and their quaUty is super-
excellent.

CHAPTER XI

THE AUSTRALIAN AS A FIGHTER

"I THINK this must be my r: nth for
doing it, sir — August," said a Company

Sergeant-Major of the — th s, whom

one found enjoying a cigarette in his
cot on board one of the hospital ships
at Sou. lampton. The upper part of his
face and head were all hidden in white
bandages, and he had had a machine gun
bullet through the upper part of his left
leg; but he was — "Doing very nicely
now, thank you," and in first-rate spirits,
both over the prospect of a few weeks'
holiday at home — that is how he regards

132

AUSTRALIAN AS A FIGHTER 188

it — and with regard to the outlook at the
front.

" When the war's over I shall have my
hands full every August with celebrations.
I joined up on August 15th, 1914, went to
France on August 2nd, 1915, was knocked
out near Bazentin on August 2nd, 1916,
and bom on August 3rd, 1884. Certainly
must be my month for doing it, sir,
mustn't it ?

** I think the Boche will be a long time
before he forgets August, 1916, sir, or
July, either. Don't think he likes our
boys when they've got their tails fairly
up, the way they have now. He's all
right at a comfortable distance, when he's
got things his own way, is Master Boche ;
but he don't like it a little bit when our
chaps get right in among his lot, the

184 AlSrB\lJAN VS A FIGHTER

way they're doing now. He don't like
that, sir; not a little bit. With rifles,
machine guns, heavies, trench mortars,
rifle grenades, minnenwerfers, and all the
Hke o' that, he's just as happy as the
day is long. He can go on at that game
till the cows come home, and I'm not
saying but what he s mighty good at it.
He is, you know, sir. And what with lis
fine dug-outs, an' one thing with another,
he can stand a whole lot of it from us,
too, an' not be very much the worse 'or
it. But he do not like close quarter^,
sir, and he won't stick it that's the next
thing.

"I reckon, if they c uld arrange* < »r
this war to be decided by on*™ ^Tf)od h^
between a Boche battel )n a i a Britisii.
in one open field with i ver l or a

AUSTRALI4N AS A FIGHTER 185

trench in it, the wai wou i be ovei m
twenty minues, nd there vouldn't be
any mere of that Boche battalion left;
no, not if it was the best they've got in
tleir Prussian Guards. The best of em
can't stand up to our lads once tht \ get
down CO rea business alongsi '■ eaci
other. The tre ble is to get near .01 g
of -ourse. But we'll be ther a i.ght
bef( rp loig, now, sir, if w. a . ep up
the o uni^ions supply.

" \iHA see that chap down there in the
cot next the ladder, sir, the ^e speaking
to the Sister now, that's un. He's an
Australian, he is; comes from a place in
New South Wales. His battalion was in
the thick of the Pozieres show, and tiiey
say he's goin' to be ^iv er ^ Commission.
I don't know. But I ^as talking last night

lit!

186 AUSTRALIAN AS A FIGHTER

to a chap in his platoon who was along-
side him in the last fightmg there, and
he told me there was one traverse that
chap got into where the Boches was too
thick on the ground, as you might say,
for him to work his bayonet. They
reckoned they'd got him, of course ; goin'
to eat him, they was. They'd got his
rifle out of his hands; such a jam he
couldn't draw back for a thrust, you see.
And they'd somehow got him down, when
his mate came round the comer of the
traverse. He says there were seven of
the Boches.

"Well, what his mate saw was just
the seven Boches, like in a football scrum,
swayin' to an' fro. He couldn't see this
chap at all. He was imdemeath, you
see. So this other chap, he just gives

AUSTRALIAN AS A FIGHTER 137

one yell an' starts in with his baynit.
That made a bit of a break-away, as ye
might say, an' after that the fun began.
The chap who told me was a little bit of a
fellow; couldn't ha' been more'n five feet
five, another Australian, a light-weight, he
was. He hmig on to his baynit, an' put
in plenty foot-work, keepin' clear, you
see. An' he says the way his mate — ^the
big chap in the cot there — ^laid them
Boches out was the sight of a hfe-time.
He just downed 'en with his hands, an'
the chap told me that when he got a
Boche down, that Boche was done ; he
wasn't takin' any more. Anyway, they
took two of 'em prisoners, an' they
couldn't take the other five because they
was dead — dead as mutton. And the
fellow told me that big chap did it all

188 AUSTRALIAN AS A FIGHTER

with his two hands. He's cut about a
bit, you know, and they laid his head
open for him, but — one man against seven,
you know, an' them all armed ! It takes
some doin'. The Sister tol' me he'd be all
right in a week. They're hot stuff, you
know, sir, these Australians, once they
get goin'. Our boys the same. They're
happy when they get to close quarters,
an' that's just what Mister Boche can't
stand at no price."

One of the things one notices about
ninety per cent, of our wounded is that to
get the story of their own personal part in
the fighting one has to go to someone else
who was with them. They are talkative
enough about their mates, but they are
given to a modest and wholly lovable reti-
cence regarding their own exploits. This

AUSTRALIAN AS A FIGHTER 189

Company sergeant-major, for instance, who
told me about the Australian told me no
word of the incident of which an officer of
his Company afterwards told me on tne
landing-stage. Despite his head wounds
and a bullet through his upper leg he had
carried his wounded Company Commander
from a Boche sap into our own Une,
under a fire which would have made most
wounded men think only of lying very
low, in any sort of cover they could get.

" There was a private in our Company,"
raid the lieutenant who told me of tne
sergeant-major's brave act, " fellow named
, who earned the mention in dis-
patches I am sure he'll presently get if ever
a man did. One of these jolly, larky httle
chaps he is, always tumingup at orderly room
in the morning when we were training at

140 AUSTRALIAN AS A FIGHTER

home — ^incorrigible chap for the very small
misdemeanours, you know — ^but what a
little brick when he*s really up against it I
The N.C.O.'s of his platoon were knocked
out to a man, just north of Bazentin-le-
Petit there. Fritz had a machine gun
behind a knoll that simply kept us grilling.

This little chap, , got the balance of

the platoon together — fifteen or twenty of
'em, you know — ^and made a dash for the
flank of that knoll. There were only five
of 'em got there, I'm sorry to say, and by

that time had three bullet woimds.

But when they got there they just wiped
the earth with the Boches at that gun,

smothered 'em ; and little turned the

gun on the Boche line and kept it clacking
two or three hundred to the minute till I
was able to get along there with No. 9

AUSTRALIAN AS A FIGHTER 141

platoon and take over; and he wouldn't
have slacked off then, in spite of his
wounds, if I hadn't made an order of it — a
great little fighter and a bom leader, mind
you, too. There's lots of his sort on our
side, thank goodness ! "

CHAPTER XII

NEWS FOR THE O.C. COMPANY AT HOME

It would not be easy to find among the
wounded as they arrive men who have
recently had any experience of either
leisure or comfort. Freedom to rest, to
chat, to eat comfortable meals and smoke a
pipe at ease, to read a newspaper or to
write a letter — all these things have the
charm of novelty and are enjoyed with the
zest that belongs only to imaccustomed
luxuries by oiu* newly arrived wounded
officers and men.

" Haven't been able to write a word
except my signature on two or three field

142

mmmm

NEWS FOR HOME O.C. COMPANY 148

service post cards since the big push
began."

One has heard that remark from a good
many of the new-comers. One morning
a womided officer had a rather longer
wait between the time of his ship being
berthed and his train pulling out than the
average -

" It's rather different from waiting in a
trench," he said ; " I could stand a good
deal of this." As a matter of fact he put
in most of the time in writing to his
Company Commander, who, having been
wounded at an early stage in the present
offensive, has lain since in a London
hospital. From that letter I am permitted
to reproduce the following :

"It's no good my attempting to give
you any war news, because there in London

144 NEWS FOR HOME O.C. COMPANY

IVe no doubt you get far more than we d-
and know more about it; but, as you've
been away nearly a month now, I thought
you'd hke a Ime or two about the Company.
I don't suppose we've appeared in the
leading articles yet, have we ? Not but
what the men of your Company deserve as
much space there as any in the Army ; I'm
jolly sure of that. We've lost nearly half
our strength— not killed, I'm glad to say,
but wounded— but the spirit of those that
are left would do your heart good. I want
to tell yuu one thing particularly.

" You heard about the way the Battalion

took and held that trench last week,

north of . Our Company led, as you

probably know, and though I says it as
shouldn't, since I had the honour of being
in command, the work they did was abso-

NEWS FOR HOME O.C. COMPANY 145

lutely top hole — ^they excelled themselves,
and I want to tell you why.

" We got our orders the afternoon
before — about five, and at half-past six
the CO. paid us a visit and gave the
Company a little talk. We were back

in , you know, luxuriating in the

old Boche trenches and dug-outs, which,
with a little repairing and scooping out,
have made a first-rate rest place. Well,
I wish I'd got a shorthand report of what
the good old skipper said — By gad, you
know, it is marvellous the way he's
stood the strain of the last month, at his
age. Positively seems to thrive on it.
Brave ! Thpre isn't a boy in the Battalion
more absolutely indifferent to crumping
than he is. Where was I ? Anyhow, it
was all about you, and between ourselves

146 NEWS FOR HOME O.C. COMPANY

I don't mind confessing to you there was
a certain amount of sniffling before he
was through with it. You remember
those Saturday morning talks of yours
to the Company in • A ' and * B*s ' dining-
room at home. We knew the CO. looked
in once or twice, but I don't think anyone
knew just how much notice he used to
take. I tell you there wasn't much
went on in the camp that he missed.

" Well, he reminded the men of some
of the things you used to tell 'em, and
talked about how we'd lived up to it
so far in France, and the responsibility
that rested on us as first Company in
a Regular Battalion of a great Regiment
and all that, you know. Paid what I
think they call a graceful tribute to the
Service Battalions, too, he did. And then

NEWS FOR HOME O.C. COMPANY 147

he wound up with a little about the
job we were in for in the morning ; what
an honour it was for the Battalion to
have been selected by the Brigadier, and
what a double honour for * A ' Company
to lead it, and so on. We were all rather
worked up, you know. And then it was
he rung it in about you to top off with ;
said how grieved you were to be out of
it ; how he'd written to tell you what
* A ' was to do ; how you'd be thinking
about us in your bed there in London;
how we wished you could be there to lead
us, and how, by God, every man of us
would go into that show to do you proud,
you know, and more careful than if you
really were watching us, and all that.

" I wish I could give you his words,
by Jove I do. But it was fine ; I can tell

148 NEWS FOR HOME O.C. COMPANY

you that. The CO. himself was blowing
his trumpet with the dirtiest old hand-
kerchief you ever clapped eyes on ; the
C.S.M. nearly choked himself trying to
stand fast at attention with a good
chest on him ; and as for little Sammy —
there isn*t a better platoon commander
in the Battalion than little Sammy is
to-day — he was fairly crumpled up. Had
to edge round behind the CO. to hide
his blooming emotions, as they say. Oh,
it was what the men call a great * do '
all right, and seriously I'm a^vfully glad
the old man did it.

" You've heard how we got on, of
coiurse. * C ' and * D ' suffered pretty
heavily, I'm sorry to say — worse than we
did. It was a complicated job. We
had to rush the trench first, followed

NEWS FOR HOME O.C. QOMPANY 149

by * B * ; then we had to rush the support
trench and keep Boche as busy as we
could there, while * C ' and * D ' cleaned
up and consolidated the front line, which
was to be ^'^rrconently held. As it
turned out, lie Bcxhes had considerable
difficulty wit> ihiAv men. The beggars
simply wouldn't turn out of the dug-
outs to face us. We found barely five-
and twenty men in the front line, and those,
of course, we absolutely smothered ; took
'em in our stride, you know. I got one
myself with my trench dagger, and the
C.S.M. who was next to me killed three
to my certain knowledge. I saw it.

"Well, in next to no time we were
in their support line with very few casual-
ties. (Sorry to say Sergeant was

killed between the two trenches.) And

iHB

■I

150 NEWS FOR HOME O.C. COMPANY

there we had some show, I can tell you.
Curious there should be so much differ-
ence between the spirit of the Boches
in two trenches next to one another.
In that second trench, I won't say they
fought like soldiers and men, because
honestly they didn't; but they fought
like mad beasts. At least they fought
hard, I'll say that for 'em. In the front
line they funked it at first. But their
N.C.O.'s got 'em up to some purpose,
while *C' and *D' were cleaning up
there and making good.

"But in our line they fought hard
from the word go, and they fought like
beasts. I lost my own temper pretty
badly, and as you know I'm pretty
easy going. Two of the swines found
little Jimmy (you remember Jimmy in

NEWS FOR HOME O.C. COMPANY 151

No. 8) lying beside a traverse, wounded.
They both leaped at him, seeing that
he couldn't possibly defend himself, and
started slashing him through and through
with their bayonets — ^poor little chap.
That let me out, and I tackled those two
for you and myself together. I was much
too late to save Jimmy; but those two
Boches will never stir again.

" There was a lot of that sort of thing.
As I say, they fought like mad beasts, not
like soldiers. I can't help thinking they
must have had some drugs or something
given 'em before we attacked — I never
saw such brutes. And I never saw our
chaps in finer form. Gad ! it would have
done your heart good to see them. Your
name was shouted half a dozen times. We
cleaned out every living thing before we

152 NEWS FOR HOME O.C. COMPANY

finished, and I really think we could have
held that second line till morning ; but I
had my orders, and, anyhow, an orderly
came along from the CO. with a message
that T rr^s to retire to the front hne and
help *C* and 'D* consohdate. There
were still a few Boches coming up from
deep dug-outs there, and I think * C * and
• D ' were rather glad of our help in the
clearing up.

"The Boche countered five separate
times, and each time we let him get pretty
close and fairly mowed him down with

Lewis's and bombs. No exaggeration

they were thick on the ground, like mown
com. We were specially glad of the way
the show went, partly because the Boches
had been such unutterable beasts there,
and partly, too, because I'm certain every

NEWS FOR HOME O.C. COMPANY 158

man of ours strained an extra pound or two
on the strength of what the CO. had said
about you overnight."

CHAPTER XIII

((

STICKFAST AND HIS OFFICEE

A R.A.M.C. OFFICER on board one of the
hospital ships at Southampton put me into
touch with three of its passengers whom
one would have been sorry to miss.

They lay in different parts of the ship.
All were weakened by loss of blood and
considerably knocked about; all were
smoking cigarettes when I saw them, and
neither could have been in higher spirits if
they had been twelve-year-old schoolboys
arriving home for the summer holidays.

The senior is one of the oldest privates in
our New Armies; the junior is one of our

154

" STICKFAST " AND OFFICER 165

youngest officers, for he celebrated his
nineteenth birthday in a front Une trench
in France last June. His friends may
fairly be proud of him, for though only in
his twentieth year he has already proved
himself a brave officer and a gallant gentle-
man. When the war began this officer had
just left school — ^within the week of the
declaration — ^and a few weeks later he was
to have entered a merchant's counting-
house in a busy northern city. As things
are, his experiences have been quite other
than clerical. For nine months he has
been a platoon commander in the fighting
line in France. He was wounded once
before, early this year, but so slightly that a
week out of the line in a field ambulance
put him right again. Now he will enjoy a
somewhat longer rest, but he reckons on

I 1

being back in the line in a month. "Don't
want to miss aU the fun. you know »_«nd

a surgeon told me he wiU probably have his
wish.

He told some stirring things about the
conduct of his men in the fighting round
I^ngueval. But what one wants to teU
here is something about his own conduct
M one learned of it from the man most
mtmiately concerned, and an eye-witness
who was that man's section commander.

It was guesswork to call Pte , of

the -th s, one of the oldest men in

the New Armies, for one did not ask his age-
but his hair, or what httle one could see of it
under his bandages, is white, and his week-
old beard and grizzled moustache and
appearance generally are those of a man
well past middle age. I'll wager he com-

" STICKFAST " AND OFFICER 157

mitted a gallant perjury when he enlisted,
and that he will get a decoration for it in
heaven !

" Well, it wasn't not what you'd call a
regler attack, sir, it was more of a raid, like,
that our Company was in that night— up to
the left o' Longyvally it were. We was on
the right, bein' in No. 8 platoon, sir,

that's Mr. 's platoon, you know, sir.

We wasn't to take their line, you under-
stand, sir, but jus' to stir the Boches up a
bit, as ye might say, an' find out what
they was a doin' of an' put a stop to it ;
which I think we did put a stopper on it
all right, sir, so far's them perticler Boches
is concerned.

" Our a'tillery gave 'em taffy afore we
Parted, sir, toppin' off wi' fi-zc minutes'
hurricane fire, when you couldn't hardly

15ii " STICKFAST " AND OFFICER

hear yourself shout. An' then over we

went, sir, my Mr. a-leadm', an* a

proper young gen*elman he is, too, sir; as
fine a officer as we've got, I reckon, for he
never fails his men, he don't, he never
forgets 'em, an' the best of everything
that's going he gets for 'em ; an' I don't see
how a officer can do more'n that, whoever
he be.

** I got a bullet through me left arm
while we was crossin', an' that made me a
bit awkward like wi' me baynit. But I got
me Boche all right, sir, when we got to
the trench— I did that, an' I stuck him
twicet I did, for I wanted to be sure of him.
An' jus' when I was drawin' me baynit
back the second time an' wonderin' if I'd
have any more luck, a big Boche sergeant
come at me — I saw the stripes of him, sir.

"STICKFAST" AND OFFICER 159

an' afore I could get me baynit back for a
thrust he caught me over the head with the
spiked club he carried. I saw the club,
aye, an' saw it comin' for me head. Some-
how I knew I couldn't stop it — couldn't
get the baynit that high up quick enough,
ye see. So I thought, ' Let be, then, we'll
go together.' An' so I let drive wi' me
baynit for his stomach. An' that's all I
knew about it."

At this point one had to turn to the next
cot but two, where the grizzled warrior's
section commander lay with a broken
ankl^ —a fair, red-haired, blue-eyed giant,
of about three or four and twenty. Before
he would tell me anything else, the section
commander had to put one hand to his
mouth whilst I bent down low towards him,
by order, to receive in my ear in a hoarse

/S^i

160 " STICKFAST " AND OFFICER

whisper the following piece of infonna-
tion :

"You might think him queer, but a
gamer old blighter never wore out shoe-
leather— if you can foller me, sir.'*

The jerks of the section commander's
head, his ponderous winks, violently twisted
mouth, and gesticulating right thumb
were upon the whole sufficient— to the
entire ward, one would have thought — ^to
indicate that he referred to my grizzled
friend. A transparent person, the section
commander — ^Heaven send him sound an-
kles and good luck wherever he may go I
The elaborately set forth unconiciousness
of his look across at the grizzled one, after
his hoarse whisper to me, was a thing
beautiful to see.
" As I was sayin', sir," he began, well

" STICKFAST " AND OFFICER 161

knowing he had said nothing of the sort as
yet, ** we made what you might call a nice
clean job o* that bit o* t«nch, an' the dug-
outs— remarkable clean job of the dug-
outs, sir — ^with Mills *an^ grenades an'
plenty of 'em. An' after the 'and gre-
nades, three men with the baynit in each,
sir, so's to leave all tidy. Great one for
tid3in' up, sir, is our officer. An' then he
blew his whistle three times, sir, did Mr.

. That was the signal to retire, an'

we all climbed out beside him, just as he'd
told us : hand an' knees outside. Mr.

come out last, an' when we'd gone it

might be ten paces, sir.
Hullo 1 ' says Mr. —

ii t

-, * Where's old

Stickfast ? ' he says, by which he meant
to refer, sir, to his Nibs here, not meanin'
any harm to the old boy, sir, not at aU,

1.0

Li|28 125

1^ 12.0

1.8

MICROCOPY RESOLUTION TEST CHART

NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS

STANDARD REFERENCE MATERIAL 1010a

(ANSI and ISO TEST CHART No. 2)

PHIiiilP

■

mmmm

162 " STICKFAST " AND OFFICER

but we call him * Stickfast ' because he
never was known to fall out, or go sick, or

give up. Nex' thing I knew, Mr. was

runnin' as you might say hell for leather —
if you can foller me, sir — ^for that Boche
trench, yellin' *' Stickfast ! ' loud enough to
startle the Kayser. But jus' before he
started he'd said, * You get on back to our
lines, lads. Take 'em back. Sergeant,' he

said to Sergeant

" ' Orders,' says the sergeant, sorter
grumpy like. You could see he didn't
like it, but off he goes with the platoon.
Well, I stooped down to do up me boot-
lace, ye see, sir, an' I grabbed two men o'
my section, an' told 'em — ^told 'em to do
up theirs, ye see, sir. An' when we got
back into the trench we was only a yard
or two behind Mr. . 'Hullo, Cor-

1 1

" STICKFAST " AND OFFICER 168

poral,* says he, friendly-like, like that, sir,
' what the hell are you doin' here ? ' he
says ; jus* like that. So, of course, I told
him the sergeant sent us back to lend him
a hand, and just then old Stickfast there
did a bit of a groan, and a bunch o' Boches
come round the edge of the traverse, feelin*
their way with baynits well out, thinkin*
we'd all gone.

"Then Mr. he lets out a yell

you could hear a mile off. * Let 'em have
it, boys I Bomb 'em out ! Give 'em
hell ! All the lot of ye 1 ' says he, just
as if he'd got a company behind him.
I had one bomb left, be chance, an' gave
it 'em over the traverse perlitely as I
could, an' Mister Boches bolted like
rabbits^-couldn't see their tails for smoke.
Old Stickfast wouldn't let go his rifle, so

164 " STICKFAST " AND OFFICER

i !

we had to yank it out of the big Boche
he had skewered in the belly, an' then
we lugged him out of the trench. Mr.

has got the Boche's knobkerry — a

beauty with spikes an inch long on it.
Gom' back with Stickfast I got a bullet

through me ankle, an' Mr. , he got

another in the shoulder, an' Stickfast,
•e got one in his lef ' hand. But otherwise
we was all serene, an' I got in on me
hands an' knees, with two Boche helmets.
So we didn't do so bad. But we reckon

Mr. would ha' gone back after

Stickfast by hunself if he'd had to walk
to Berlin for the old man."

The Temporary officer is apt to be
quite permanently a man, and the men
he leads will follow his like while breath
is in them.

I ■

CHAPTER XIV

A COOL CANADIAN

Their rollicking high spirits is certainly
the thing that impresses one first and
most about our wounded officers and
men as they arrive. But there are other
impressions. One notes a striking preva-
lence of true modesty. And upon
investigation one often finds a deal of
shrewd, direct thoughtfulness.

The second-in-command of a battalion
which has been doing some hard and
bloody fighting on the immediate flank of
our Allies, down Guillemont way, was
among the cot cases one talked with.

u 163

!:i

166 A COOL CANADIAN

1 ,1

! )!

He had been rather badly knocked about
by a German bomb at dose quarters, but
he allowed me to light a cigarette for
him, and obviously enjoyed smoking it
while we chatted.

** Efficiency, organisation, thoroughness
— jolly good things in their place, you
know," he said. "The Grermans have
them splendidly developed, and in the
past perhaps we've been a bit lacking
in this direction. But my own impres-
sion is that the folk who talk about the
Huns having gene mad — ^being the mad
dogs of Europe — ^they're not really ex-
aggerating so much as you might sup-
pose. I believe a tremendous number
of Boches are to all intents and purposes
mad. Tell you why.

"Their worship of efficiency and

A COOL CANADIAN

167

thoroughness — ^machine organisation — ^has
carried *em so far that they have entirely
lost all sense of humour. Now, when a
man really loses all vestige of the sense
of humour, I tell you he's too nearly mad
to be good company. It really is so.
Complete absence of the sense of humour
is in effect madness, or leads to it, anyhow.
And that's what's the matter with the
Boche to-day.

" When the Hun was practically having
things his own way a year ago, you
know, the news he gave the world was
quite intelligible, and a good deal of it
was to be relied on. He lies like the
devil now in all his news. Well, that's
all right ; one can easily see why. But
if you read his lies carefully — ^I've been
reading 'em all the way between Amiens

168

A COOL CANADIAN

and here— you*Il find they're the lies of
a madman ; they are quite mad lies.

'*He says our offensive has been
smashed; that we have given it up,
having accomplished nothing at all ; that
we have failed to injure him in the least
have gained nothing, and are so appallet
by the terrible casualties he has inflicted
on us that we have finally given up in
despair. Well, really, you know ! Well,
I ask you, do we look like it ? Perhaps
you'll say you can't judge. Well, you ask
any man you like who comes from the
front. I don't care how hard he's hit:
he can't help knowing the preposterous
absurdity of that sort of guff. Everybody
on our side knows we hold the initiative
and dictate every move. On the west
front every move must be costly because

■ 'i

A COOL CANADIAN

169

it*s all over ground fortified and prepared
for a couple of years — an unending chain
of fortresses really. But— we keep going
forward, we never go back, and every hour,
day and night, we are inflicting more
casualties than we suffer.

"Thank goodness, at our worst, we
never showed much sign of losing our sense
of himiour. IVe been studying the Boche
in the field for ove.: a year, and I'm con-
vinced he's lost his entirely, and that this
is a worse loss than anything in ground or
munitions. Indeed, I think it's fatal. His
monstrous war machine is still immensely
strong, and will go on working and destroy-
ing for a long time yet. But his mdividual
fighters — ^they are either drug-and-machine
driven maniacs, foaming and fighting as
mad dogs fight, or in other places they are

170

A COOL CANADIAN

jil

: If

t la
! I

broken and despairing wretches who, in the
absence of blows and pricks from their
herdsmen, beg for mercy and capture.
TheyVe no sane medium left. Our chaps
are all sane medium — cheery, game fighters
with an active sense of humour whic^ would
redeem the worst sort of shambles. To the
last gasp our chaps remain human, so do
the French. The AUies will win if only
because of that. They remain human —
^nen and good fellows — ^no matter how
much horror the mad dogs put up. * Mad
dogs ' is not too strong, believe me. I've
seem 'em spitting and biting. I know — ^by
God I do ! "

A Canadian captain with his left arm
slung and a German officer's helmet in his
haversack said :

** Oh, I'm a fraud — oughtn't to be here

A COOL CANADIAN

171

at all. There's nothing the matter with
me but a bullet through my arm. And,
anyhow, logically, I suppose I ought to be
dead or a prisoner with the Huns. We

took a trench north-west of , you

know, and our chaps hurried on to the
second line without orders. No doubt
they thought they'd cleared the front line.
I tried hard to get out after them, but it
was an awkward place with a high, shaling
bit of parados, and you'd hardly believe
hov, important your left arm is till you try
a job like that without it— my elbow was
broken, you see.

"My orderly was with me. He'd got
pipped through the shoulder outside the
trench. While I squatted there I heard a
scuffling underground just round the other
side of the traverse I was leaning on. Took

172

A COOL CANADIAN

a look round the other side and found a
Boche officer— the first I*d seen— just
appearing at the mouth of a dug-out, feel-
ing his way out. I could see the spikes of
helmets behind him. So there it was. My
revolver was empty. My orderly had lost
nis rifle away outside the trench. Awk-
ward, wasn't it ?

" Well, of course, I pointed my revolver
at th^ Boche officer. One does that in-
stinctively, I suppose. And to my sur-
prise he said in English, ' Don't shoot ! '
I said I'd shoot the lot of 'em if one of 'em
moved. * You sit perfectly still. Sit right
down where you are, Mister Boche, and I'll
take you to England, but if you move
you'll get six Service bullets, and my men
will come along and bury you in your
dug-out.'

i i

I i

! J

f^p

' Don't shoot,' he said in English.

! I

I I

Hill

nil

M J

A COOL CANADIAN

1T8

" They sat down like lambs. I managed
to whisper to my orderly, round the edge
of the traverse, to get forward somehow
and bring some men, and first of all to find
me a ifle and bayonet, or a bomb, or a
toothpick, or some blessed thing better than
an empty revolver. * Now do be careful.
Mister Boche,' I said to the officer. ' Tm a
conscientious objector when I'm at home,
and I hate kiUing Uke the devil.* (I don't
know for the Ufe of me what made me tell
him that.) * But I shall be bound to give
you six bullets if you budge one inch, and
they're clumsy brutes, these Service bullets,
they make a devil of a hole at close quarters,
worse than two or three rifle bullets.*

" ' We're not moving,' said the Boche.
He seemed a bit sulky, I thought. So
we sat and waited. My orderly had gone

174

A COOL CANADIAN

t'. ;!r1

and nothing seemed to happen. I felt
for my pipe with my left hand, but it
was no go. That arm was out of business.
* Got anything to smoke ? ' I said to the
Boche, and as he moved I saw the risk,
and told him pretty sharply to put down
the rifle he carried. 'Over this way,
please ; gently now, along the ground —
careful!* I told him. And so I got a
first-rate weapon. Seems incredible I
shouldn't have thought of that before,
doesn't it? That's why I say I ought
logically to be dead.

" Well, after that we got on famously.
He found a cigar, and gave it me; but
I had to pretend I didn't like cigars,
because with only one hand in working
order I didn't dare to risk lighting it.
But that Boche officer remained curiously

A COOL CANADIAN

175

sulky, I thought. I tried him on half a
dozen subjects, and I know he could
speak English as well as I could; but
I couldn't get much out of him, except
that he didn't Uke our artillery at aU,
and that he supposed we must be near
the end of our ammunition. Oh, and he
said that, now the Zepps had complete
command of the air all over England, life
must be pretty beastly for us there.
I told hun I thought they had managed
to kill a few dogs and cats, a horse or
two and so on ; but that the only thing
that worried our folk was that so few
people had been able to see a Zepp, and
they were all very curious to have a look
at one. He didn't seem to like that.

"After a long time my orderly got
back with three men and a corporal,

176

A COOL CANADIAN

and then I ordered the Boches to march
out without their weapons. There were
twenty-two of 'em altogether. I thought
my empty revolver was rather a good
joke, so I told the Boche officer about
it then ; but he only scowled and growled,
and after that he was sulkier than ever,
so we had no more talk."

CHAPTER XV

THE HOSPITAL MAIL-BAGS

A MEDICAL officer, whose duties take him
to many of our miUtary hospitals, has
been good enough to obtain, and lend,
extracts from a number of letters received
by wounded officers and men from c«
rades in other hospitals.

AU over the world the men and women
of our race and our brave Allies are
thinkmg, talking, and writing of the great
offensive north of the Somme which began
on July 1st. Histories are aheady in
the making, no doubt. But one doubts
if any of them will contain more direct

177

178 THE HOSPITAL MAtt-BAGS

T"l

; 1

" i
'- 1

lit

human interest than coiild be found just
now in the mail-bags of our military
hospitals dotted over the face of Britain
from Edinburgh to Torquay. Our
wounded soldiers are enjoying an amount
of leisure and rest which is, of course,
entirely out of the reach of anyone serving
at the front, and here, in our own country,
a certain freedom in writing which can
never exist in the neighbourhood of the
enemy is permissible.

One finds in our hospitals and conva-
lescent homes officers and men who were
in close contact with the enemy three
days ago, and others, again, who have
not seen the trenches for three weeks,
for three months, and even here and there
those who left the front as long ago £is
the beginning of the present year. And

THE HOSPITAL MAHi-BAGS 179

among these patients, with all their differ-
ing stages of freshness from the fighting
line, there are, of course, family ties in
the military sense as well as the civilian
sense. The miUtary family is the division ;
its branches are the brigades; its house-
holds are the battalions. A who counts
the time he has been m Blighty by weeks or
months, gives home news (in the civilian
sense) to B., who as yet can only count
his time in England by days, and B.,
fresh from his unit in France, gives home
news in the military sense to A.

Thus a lieutenant in a Scottish hospital
who arrived home wounded a few days
after the present great offensive began,
writing to a senior officer of his unit in a
London hospital, newly arrived there from
the neighbourhood of High Wood, after

180 THE HOSPITAL MAnrBAGS

'■ t

thanking his senior for news of the
Battalion, says :

" Some of the things at home will puzzle
you at first. Having time to read the
newspapers right through makes a differ-
ence. I was awfully puzzled at first to
find they still have tribunals and exemp-
tions and things, and people grousing about
the docking of holidays and week-ends and
the terrible hardships of being taken away
from their business for military service, and
so on. But these things are only surface
incidents, really, and don't mean much,
though they make a good deal of noise.
The country's perfectly sound at heart, I
thmk, and I am told the munitions workers
really are playing up like sports.

"One's got to remember, you know,
that in spite of all that's happened our

THE HOSPITAL MAH^BAGS 181

folk at home here have not seen war the
way the people have in France. It makes
all the difference. Also the whole idea of
citizen military service is strange and new
to them as touching themselves. They
hear of married men of forty being called
up for training, and they seem to think it's
an unheard-of kind of heroism or martyr-
dom, or something. Dear souls I They're
so extraordinarily sentimental.

" As you know, in our Battalion over
sixty per cent, of the men were married and
all enlisted before November, 1914. The
proportion x)f over forty was very consider-
able, although the age limit then was —
what was it ? — something in the thirties, I
know. They gave up their jobs and left
their wives and families to lie about their
age — ^bless 'em ! — ^and to train with us

182 THE HOSPITAL MLAtt-BAGS

without being told to by anyone, and
nobody thought to call them heroes or
martyrs, and I'm sure it never struck them
that way, though they've been living in the
trenches just on a year, and the new lot
that get so much sympathy have been
raking in the shekels at higher rates of pay
than they ever had in their lives, during
twenty months of war, and enjoying all
home comforts.

" Queer, isn't it ? And then to think of
men a month or two over the age being
keen to take advantage of the calendar
nmo! And other chaps prating to the
tribunals about their consciences and their
businesses and things (mostly businesses,
I think) now, after two years, and at the
height of the Somme push ! But the coun-
try as a whole is sound, and quite unalter-

THE HOSPITAL MAIL- BAGS 188

ably determined, and I think we can rely
on it there'll be no slackening in the muni-
tions output; and if I*m rifht there the
Boche's number is up and nothing in the
wide world can save him."

A sergeant on the South Coast, writing
to his platoon commander in Manchester :

" It is three days now since I landed, sir,
and I was very glad to have your letter this
morning. You really must not worry
about the platoon, sir. They wouid be
very much upset if they knew you were
worrying about them, because they would
think you could not trust them, and, you
know, sir, they v vorth trusting. I left

Lance-Sergeant in charge. He's come

on wonderfully, and I asked Ciiptain C

if he would recommend him for full ser-
geant. He's worth it. The doctor here

184 THE HOSPITAL MAtt-BAGS

promises me that I can be out of hospital
in 1^ week or two, so I may get back before
you. And, in any case, the platoon will do
nothing to disgrace you, sir, you can rely
on that. In the push up north of Pozidres
we had the right flank of the Company, and
the Captain said we did splendidly. We
had nme casualties, and I'm quite sure we
got three times that number of Boches,
besides eleven prisoners we took. After

we*d got their front trench, Corporal S

and three men of his section went out on
their own— the moon was clouded then—
and got a Boche machine gun from their
second line and brought it back with three
helmets. The corporalwas slightly wounded,
and the others not touched. The CO.
was told about it. They all want you back,
sir, but the platoon's domg fine, and you

THE HOSPITAL MAIL-BAGS 185

must not worry about them. I think
we've got the Boche fairly moving this
time. He won't hold Thi^pval much

longer."
Private in Colchester to Private

in London :

** I saw T D to-day, and he told

me you were in London. How goes it, old
sport ? I £T0t a bit of shrap in my shoulder,
but nothing to worry about. We had a
great do outside Longyvally after you left.
You remember that ridge on the right past
where the reaper lay? We had Master
Boche on toast there. He came on at us
in great blobs, like those stunts we did at
Codford. We held our fire, and then let
him have it at close range, four Lewis guns
and our own rapid, hard as we could lick.
My rifle burned my hand. You never

186 THE HOSPITAL MAH^-BAGS

I t

saw anything like it, the way those Huns
went down. Seemed a shame to take the
money. And then, all of a sudden, * Cease
fire ! ' And the Captain yells out, * At 'em,
boysl Finish the blighters!' he says.
And over we went. It was a proper circus.
We thought it was to be just a defence,
and instead we took their blooming trench
and fairly put the wind up the lot of them.
You never saw the like. Half of 'em was
baynited climbing over their own parados,
fairly spiked to it, and the rest of 'em was
prisoners; fair screaming for mercy they
was. We held that trench for over an
hour, and bombed right along their com-
munications and blew in their dug-outs and
two machine-gim emplacements. And
while we were doing it ' B ' Company was
cutting a sap out from our own front line,

;■ I

THE HOSPITAL MAH^-BAGS 187

had

most of the way back.

so's we Had cover
A great do."

From a subaltern in Glasgow to a
subaltern in London :

"I've just heard I've got my second
star; so you'll have to be a bit more
respectful in future, my son. Three weeks
in command of the Company, you know,
with only one star— what a hero I Mmd
you, they did play up well. I'll never
forget it. There wasn't a man m the
Company but was trying to help me all
the time, and as for the old C.S.M.—
bless his Geordie heart !— I'd like to put
up a statue to him. For three days
before he was killed I don't beUeve he
was ever off his feet. And, mind you,
we were hard strafing most of the tune.
He did a bit of everything, the S.M.,

188 TiiE HOSPITAL MAIL-BAGS

•■'

firom bombing and machine gunning to
biuying Huns to get 'em out of our road.
I got a couple of helmets, but I gave

one to , because it was given me.

The one I've kept I took on my own
from the beggar who got his bayonet
through my arm. I'll never go without
a rifle and bayonet again. Had to tackle
the beggar with my hands ; but I finished
him with my revolver, and after that I
carried his rifle, you bet, and hung his
pickle-tub, or whatever you call 'em, on
my belt. There's lots of fight left in 'em,
of course ; but we've got 'em cold this
time, I'm certain of it. The prisoners
we take are jolly glad to get out of it.
People say human nature's the same
everywhere. Well, it isn't. You take
it from me, these blooming Huns are not

THE HOSPITAL MAH^BAGS 189

the same stuff as our men. Our chaps
mostly want to go straight; they're aU
decent at heart. Boche wants to go
crooked, and begad he does."

e HAPTER XVI

THE DIFFERENCE

As a listener only, I participated in a
rather interesting meeting on the deck
of a hospital ship just berthed at South-
ampton. Captain J , who was in-
valided home from the western front
in the spring of this year, was outward
bound for the same sector of our front,
and was given permission to board the

hospital ship to meet Lieut. R , a

relative serving in the same unit, and
homeward bound now, as the result of a
wound received forty-eight hours earlier
in the fighting north-west of Pozi^res.

190

THE DIFFERENCE

191

Salutations and first inquiries ended,
the Captain said :

"Well, it seems I've missed the best
of the fun. I strafed like blazes to get
out in the beginning of July, but couldn't
bring it off. And now, according to the
newspapers, we're getting back to sort
of pre-Push conditions."
Who says so ? "

Oh, some correspondent or another."
Well, I'll bet he hasn't been in the
trenches much if he says that. There's
nothing the same as it was, even m June,
let alone when you were there."
" But what's the difference ? "
" 0 1, every mortal thing is different.
It siXl feels different."
" But how ? "
Every way. For instance, there was

«(

192

THE DIFFERENCE

nothing but bare mud all round our
trenches when you left, and long before
the Push there was green stuff growing
round everywhere ; creepers and things
straggling over the sides of the trenches ;
weeds sprouting everywhere. And that's
been altered again since the Push ; every-
thing being ploughed in, as you might
say, by the a'tillery/'

** Yes, I suppose the heavy stuff has
chewed it up a bit ; but we saw plenty of
that before I left. You remember how
the Boche mortars and oil-cans smothered
us the week before I left, below La
Boiselle ? "

" Oh, that I My dear chap, that was
a rest cure. We used to notice a shell-
hole then. What you notice now is a
place where there's no shell-hole, and

THE DIFFERENCE

198

you don't often find it. And anyhow, of
course, aU the trenches you knew are
away behind us now. One goes over-
land all round there. Even north of that's
the same. Lancaster Avenue, Rivington,
John o' Gaunt, Coniston, right along
to Chorley, Chequer Bent, Lime Street,
Liverpool Avenue, all those streets we
worked in before you left— God, the water
and the mud there was there— well, they'll
never be used as trenches again, you know.
All overland there now— stray bullets,
of course ; but just as safe as the villages
we used to billet in."

" Yes, of course, you're further forward,
but when one gets there I suppose it's
much the same as the old places used

tobe?"

"Not the least bit. It's all totally

104

THE DIFFERENCE

different. You see, we don't go into
trenches now to hold a bit of line, as it
used to be. We're on the move now, you
see. Oh, no, we've done with that rotten
old grind of everlastingly going back to the
same old quagmires. Then, you know,
we're on the high ground now. That
makes an enormous difference. You can
see the Promised Land, as Tommy says,
see it all the time, and we're nibbling
chunks out of it all the time. Oh, the
chap who says it's as it was doesn't know
what he's talking about. Nobody feels a
bit the same, I can tell you. Why, our
a'tillery's working now in places where the
Boche a'tillery used to be, away ahead of
their old front, you know — ^what used to be
behind it.

The main thing about the ground one

((

THE DIFFERENCE

195

used to look out over was its emptiness.
'Member how desolate it used to look?
Dead and empty like those Wells stories—
before the earth had any people on it.
Begad I it isn't empty now. We dear it
up behind us, of course ; the salvage chaps
see to that ; hundreds of tons of Boche
rifles, equipment, and so on. And out in
front you get the same mess, but different
when the breeze is from that way, because
of the number of dead Boches, you know.
Lots of the ground we take is full of dead
Boches before ever we get near it— dug-
outs full, trenches full, sheU-holes full-
dead Boches everywhere ; dead rats, too,
by the thousand. And yet the Boches do
their best to get in thek own dead. They're
pretty good at it. Like everything else
theydo— matter of policy, you know. The

196

THE DDTERENCE

sight of so many dead is as discouraging to
their troops as the stink of 'em is sickening
to us. ' ■

** Oh, I can't tell you what the difference
is, but you can take it from me there's
nothing the same as it was, nothing at all.
You've only got to look at our men to
know the difference. They— well, they've
become veterans, you know, real old
warriors. Before, we went plodding along,
pegging away, you know, because one had
to do one's job ; but now — now, we're
winning the war, we're getting ahead —
everybody knows it. I can't explain the
thing, but you'll see what I mean directly
you get out. We get held up here and
there ; we shall go on getting held up, of
course. But there's no deadlock; you
know we're getting on with it all the time.

THE DIFFERENCE

197

and the Boche is getting smashed up. Oh,
it's different, aU right."

Looked at on paper there is something
curiously dumb and inarticulate about
it all. but I could see the captain felt, as I
did, that it certainly was " different." If
the lieutenant could not explain very well,
he was able to transmit his own convic-
tion.

A letter reached me from a wounded
officer who landed here recently, and was
sent to a London hospital. He had been
asked to let one know what impressed him
most about the revolutionary change he
passed through from the fighting line,
north-east of Bazentin-le-Petit, to his pre-
sent resting-place in one of the surgical
wards of a military hospital in London.

" But the first thing is the bed, you know

198

THE DIFFERENCE

—clean sheets and absolutely unlimited
sleep. At first I had a dozen or more
sleeps in the day as well as the solid night
slabs of it. Even now I'm hogging it a bit
inthatiespect. It is an absolutely glorious
thing to feel the clean sheets all round you,
and know you can sleep as much as ever
you like. Then the baths. To wash as
much as ever you like I I tell you you've
got to go seven days and nights without
ever taking your boots off or seeing soap
or a towel, to know what this luxury means
— it's priceless. And then the grub. It
seems I'm a pretty fleshly sort of a chap,
eh ? Well, it's true, anyhow ; I still Und
it a great joy to see a tray with a snowy
cloth and shining things put down on my
bed-table. It sounds piggish, but the
eating of the nice clean food is a tremen-

THE DIFFERENCE

199

dous joy, just sitting there eating, with a
book beside the tray too, and to feel you
haven't got to hurry, or watch out, or
listen, or arrange for any blessed thing at
all. Sometimes I just sniff the sweet,
clean air and enjoy that. I just lie, and
let my eyes drift up and down the ward,
hearing nothing, looking at nothing, enjoy-
ing everything — it's peace. I never knew
what the word meant before. Nobody
ctn who hasn't lived in the firing line. I've
made up my mind what it is that sort of
heals and recharges one more than any-
thing else — it's being not responsible for
anjrthing or anybody. It's great."

CHAPTER XVII

WHAT EVERY M.O. KNOWS

The public probably realise now a good
deal more than they did before the present
Allied offensive north of the Somme, as
to the terribly far-reaching character of
the destruction wrought by the kind of
fighting that is waged on the western
front. The wars of the past have been
child's play by comparison with this kind

of fighting.

One has grown accustomed to finding
among the wounded a few men who have
been struck down without ever being
near the firing line. Transport men,

200

WHAT EVERY M.O. KNOWS 201

quartermaster-sergeants, orderlies in vil-
lages behind the lines, and all sorts of
people whose work keeps them well in
rear of the fighting lines, have seen their
share of death and destruction in this
war. Even before the present offensive,
and in parts of the Ime which were called
"quiet," death came flying through the
air from time to tune, to scatter devasta-
tion in all kinds of imexpected places.

During the last few months our artillery
has been making life extraordinarily diffi-
cult for the enemy, even in places situated
two and three hours' march behind his
fightmg Unes. In this work, one gathers
from all new arrivals from the fiwnt, our
gunners have established a very marked
superiority over the Boche. Wounded
airmen have told one that for every sheU

202 WHAT EVERY M.O. KNOWS

which has exploded during the past month
m villages and rest places behind our
front, fifty of our shells have landed, with
deadly effect, among the Him's lines of
communication.

The fact remains, however, that, even
on our side, the risks of shot and shell are
by no means confined, in this war, to
the combatants. Many of our stretcher-
bearers take almost as much risk as the
average private of the line, and our
medical officers often carry on their labours
in circumstances of the most deadly ex-
posure.

I was talking with a newly-landed
R.A.M.C. officer, who had carried on his
work of tending and dressing wounded
men for several hours, after being badly
mauled himself by shrapnel splinters.

WHAT EVERY M.O. KNOWS 208

His point of view was different, of course,
from that of the fighting man, but not
less interesting and valuable, one thought.
"In a war like this, you know," he
said, "one comes across all sorts of
bravery quite outside kiUing and being
..led. Perhaps the pubhc hardly reaUses
yet what a lot there is in soldiers' Uves,
outside fighting. I sometimes think the
actual fighting is among the least severe
of the strains placed upon the soldier.

" The recent fighting has been on such
an epic scale, such a huge and devastating

business ^what's the word I saw in the

papers this morning ? ' Grandiose.' Yes,
that's it— that I suppose it's natural the
stay-at-home public should be apt to
forget the merely human aspect. But it's
there just the same. Our chaps remain

-v

204 WHAT EVERY M.O. KNOWS

just as human as ever, in their rough
kindliness one to another, and— don*t
forget— m the different ills and disabilities
to which humans are subject.

"Fighting makes plenty of demands
for two-o'clock-in-the-moming courage,
of course ; but so do other things in this
life at the front, I assure you. And,
whereas the public hears something about
the fighting heroism, it knows very little
about the other kmds. Oh, well, they are
all fighting courage, of a kind, of course.

"What I mean is this: toothache,
neuralgia, dyspepsia, colic, stomach
cramps, sick headaches, sore throats, whit-
lows, and homely little things of that sort,
are not washed out by terrific bombard-
ments and epoch-making advances. Not
a_bit of it. The world's greatest philo-

WHAT EVERY M.O. KNOWS 205

sophers have often admitted that neither
their philosophy nor anyone else's was
proof against a stomach ache or the tor-
ments of an exposed nerve in a hollow
tooth. Regunental officers will teU you
that it takes a pretty full man's share of
pluck and endurance, even when one is
very fit, to * stick it ' cheerfully in some
of the phases of an offensive Uke this.

" Well, I'd like the public to bear in
mind what is known to every medical
officer in the Army, that in every single
unit on the front there are officers and
men who are ' sticking it,' hour after hour,
and day after day, with never an interval
of rest or comfort, or anything to ease
them, when, if they were at home, no
matter how urgent or important their
busmess, they would be m bed, or at

206 WHAT EVERY MO. KNOWS

least receiving such ease and comfort,
such relief from pain, as medical attention
can provide in civil life.

" I'd like everyone who is doing his bit
at home, every man and every woman,
to remember this. These brave fellows
of ours they won't ' go sick,' you know,
during an offensive. It's as much as
one can do to get some of them out of
the fighting line even when they are quite
badly woimded, and as for the wounds
of sickness — sometimes infinitely more ex-
hausting and trying to bear — ^well, they
just set their teeth and say nothing
about these.

" In the last week, I assure you, I have
been quite glad to see coming my way
with wounds (so that I could get them
the rest and medical attention they

WHAT EVERY M.O. KNOWS 207

needed), soldiers, from colonels to privates,
who to my certain knowledge must have
been suffering horribly for days, and in
some cases for weeks, without the slightest
kind of alleviation of any sort, whilst
keepmg a stiff upper lip, anc carrying on
with never a spoken word that wasn't
cheery, in all the din and fury of the
front Une; men with acute internal
troubles, racking neuralgia, or violently
painful things like whitlows, Uving on
biscuits and bully beef in shell-pounded,
sun-baked chalk ditches, for a week or
so on end, half bUnd for lack of sleep.

" The very last man I dressed had a
sUght wound in the left hand. 'You
might fix this up as soon as you can,
will you. Doc' he said cheerily, to
explain why he did not want to wait

208 WHAT EVERY M.O. KNOWS

his turn. * I must get back to my platoon
as quick as I can. We've got a little
raid on this evening.' A moment later
he was vomiting. Well, I won't bother
you with detail, but his case was per-
fectly dear. In ordinary hfe he'd have
been in bed, and probably operated on,
weeks before. I knew beyond any possi-
bility of doubt the sort of torment he
must have been suffering for weeks and
the exact reasons why he looked such a
scarecrow. I fixed him. I was his senior
in rank, and when he tried to get away
I placed him under arrest; begad, I uid.
At the clearing station, later on, I found
out from his Company Commander, who
was woimded, that, though everyon? could
see he was pretty ill, this lieutenant had
never said one word about his condition

■MHliiiik

WHAT EVERY M.O. KNOWS 209

or allowed anyone else to talk about it.
He had just gone on with his job, day
and night. * About the best officer Tve
got, too,' said his Company Commander.
* Couldn't eat, himself; but he never
missed seeing the last handful of his
platoon's rations properly dished out.
Oh, he mothered 'em well.'

"To a medical man some of these
cases are wonderful. We know precisely
what they mean. It's the kind of heroism
that doesn't win decorations; but it's
the real article aU right, I can assure
you, and this New Army of ours is full
of it. I'd like the people at home to
understand something about it. It should
make it easier for them to stick their
bit without bothering too much about
missed hoUdays and things."

210 WHAT EVERY M.O. KNOWS

This medical officer had nothing to
say about the quiet heroism of many of
his comrades of the R.A.M.C. One has
to look elsewhere for appreciations of
that very real bravery.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE SOUTH AFRICAN

Among all the laughing, smoking, chatting,
cheery thousands of wounded men one
has seen land in England from the front
I have met one who was sad.

This was a South African Company
Commander who landed with shrapnel
woi:nds in hip and ankle. It required
some perseverance on my part to obtam

any information at all from Captain T ;

but the striking difference between his
mood and that of aU those round him
impressed me, and I am glad I did eventu-
ally fathom the reasons of it. Apart from

211

212 THE SOUTH AFRICAN

their general human interest, they throw
a notable light on the relations existing
between the officers and other ranks in
our South African units.

The sector of new line that Captain

T 's company held north-east of

was most furiously counter-attacked by the
Hims after an intense bombardment. The
third and fourth and fifth waves of the
attack were broken by the company's
trench fire, which included Lewis guns
handled to the best possible advantage.

But still the Boches c&me streaming
on, and accordingly the company rose
out of their shallow trench and rushed
forward a bit to welcome the invader,
having learned on more than one occasion
d^uing the preceding week just how little
the Hun likes the steel.

THE SOUTH AFRICAN 218

In that advance Captain T was

struck down. As he lay helpless on the
ground he saw plainly that the enemy's
charge was broken, and he ordered his
company back to their trench to save
casualties. 7^.^ yelled to his men to get
back, and ht sent a young lance-corporal
(who had only earned his stripe during
that same week) to ram the order home.
So the defenders began to stream back
imevenly as the word reached them.

Just then Captain saw two tilings.

He saw four straggling Boches approach-
ing him where he lay, and he saw the
young lance-corporal (whose rifle had been
smashed earlier on) deliberately retimiing
to him from the direction of the trench.
The Boches had doubtless recognised his
uniform, and were anxious to kill or

214 THE SOUTH AFRICAN

capture a captain. The young lance-
corporal was coming on slowly and
steadily, like a man drawn irresistibly
by some kind of fascination.

" Get back to the trench, man I Get
back I " shouted the captain. One of the
Boches dropped on his knee to fire. The
lance-corporal came steadily on. " Go
back," shouted the captain as sternly as
he could. "D'you hear me, corporal?
That's an order. Go back, or I'll put
you under arrest. Damn you, go back ! "
The kneeling Boche fired twice, and
missed. The lance-corporal — ^no more
than a boy in years — ^looked back and
forward. He had his orders, and was a
well-disciplined, good lad. It was as
though the sharp order had placed weights
about his feet. So he swayed.

THE SOUTH AFRICAN 215

Then he gave one look at his captain —
"you know the way your favourite dog
looks at you if you order him back home
when, perhaps, you've a gim under your
arm ? " — and, in defiance of the discipUne
which made an order tug at his feet, the
boy strode on again towards his captain,
glancing from the Boches to his officer,
as though measuring his chances.

The captain managed to level his
revolver. " It was worth a bluff to try
and get the fellow back."

" By God, corporal, I'll put a bullet
through you if you don't go back 1 "

And at that the lance-corporal broke
into a run — but towards the fallen officer,
not the trench. He fell, with a bullet
through his heart, within three paces of
his captain. Two Boches were on their

216 THE SOUTH AFRICAN

knees firing at him then. The other two
were advancing, crouchingly, on the cap-
tain. The captain had not yet used a
round from his revolver, so he turned
that now on the advancing Boches. But
at that moment a Lewis gun in oiu* own
trench, firing pretty high, opened on that
bit of No Man's Land. The incident had
been seen, evidently. The fire t . ■ i 30
high to hurt anyone, really, i » the
gunners feared to hit their own officer.
But the Boches did not understand that.
Their own gunners are a good deal less
particular. So they turned tail and ran
hard for their own trenches; while the
captain, having emptied his revolver
at them, lost consciousness, and knew
nothing more of the business till he foimd
himself in our own trench dressing station.

THE SOUTH AFRICAN 217

And now Captain

finds it sadly

hard to forget t^^e solemn, puzzled face of
the young lance-corporal who so deli-
berately elected to give up his life for his
officer.

But I told the captain he must be very
proud of that young lance-corporal, not
sad about him. There have been many
such noble deaths among the men of the
New Army, and the bulk of them are in no
way recorded — ^by mortal scribes. In
other days, where our fighting has been
always on a much smaller, less intense
scale, it was possible to record a larger
proportion of the heroic deeds done. But
as a R.A.M.C. officer with whom I talked
of this particular incident, after the
woimded captain's train had started on
its northern joimiey, said : —

218 THE SOUTH AFRICAN

*^I think it's up to us as a nation to
take good care that none of these sacri-
fices is wasted. Three parts of them will
have no other record ; but, if the people
choose, they can make the nation's future
the best possible sort of record, and the
best sort of tribute and acknowledgment,
too. All the nation has to do is to carry
on, right through, in the same spirit that
these chaps gave up their lives."

CHAPTER XIX

IT*S A GREAT DO "

High spirits would seem to be the rule
among all who land in Blighty from out
hospital ships. At least, I have come
upon only one exception to this rule.
But, in my recollection,^ itjh-water mark was
reached by a certain laughing crew of band-
aged merry-makers, who arrived on a sunny
Monday morning at the end of summer.

The word "merry-makers" seems ex-
traordinarily out of place in this connec-
tion. Put what would you ? They were
all laughing and talking nineteen to the
dozen. True, all were bandaged; the

219

220

(( TT>

IT'S A GREAT DO

clothes of most w6re torn and bloody;
many were unable to move from their
cots. But all were laughing and talking
with boisterous jocularity, and smoking
cigarettes, and generally comporting them-
selves like exceptionally cheery and high-
spirited holiday-makers on a pleasure
excursion.

Here in England we discuss and specu-
late upon the fluctuations of the world's
greatest war upon all its various fronts.
The British soldier, even when at his
weakest, from loss of blood and a long
journey in hot weather, exults in the sure
and certain confidence of victory, of
steady progress toward glorious and final
success. He has only seen his own little
bit, of course ; but he is magnificently
happy about what he has seen.

" IT'S A GREAT DO '*

221

" There's nothing on earth can stop us
now, so long as the munitions keep going
at full pressure," said a young captain,
who knows that he has to lose his right
foot, and is less cast down about it than
the average civiUan is over the prospect
of losing a wom-out tooth. I have heard
almost the same words, continuously the
same emphatic conviction, from many
scores of woimded men.

There was one particular party of private
soldiers, with a lance-corporal and a couple
of corporals among them, which, as a
specimen group of our magnificent New
Army men and as an illustration of the
inimitable spirit that animates them, will
remain always in one's memory. They
were gathered together in the shade of a
projecting portion c' '^^ boat-deck; all

2S2

" rrS A GREAT DO

*' walking cases," mostly bandaged for
more than one wound; all ragged and
blood-stained as to their uniforms, bronzed
and weather-worn as to their hands and
faces, with the indescribable fighting-line
look in their eyes ; full of laughter and
good cheer, and carrying among them a
wheelbarrow-load of souvenirs in the
shape of Boche helmets, clubs, daggers,
and the like. One half the party, I
should say, were from the neighbourhood
of Pozi^res, and the rest from the extreme
right of our line, where we join hands
with our gallant Allies, round and about
Guillemont. Some of these last were no
more than twenty-four hours from the
actual firing line. All were glad to t€dk.

** It*s a great do, sure enough ; an' if
Fritz has to put in another winter in the

rrS A GREAT DO

228

trenches he'U be a mighty sick man
before it's over. I don't see how he's
goin' to stick it."

"Come to that, how does he stick it
now ? 'Tain't because he likes it. What
else can he do ? You saw the machine
gun chains. He's driven to his job hke a
beast, is the Boche."

" That's so. I'd be sorry for the beggar
if he didn't play so many dirty tricks."

" Not me, mate. I'll never be sorry for
the Boche. Seen too much of the blighter.
If you'd seen the way he killed my officer,
you wouldn't waste no bloomin' sorrow
^ on him. Them as I've seen is as full o'
durty tricks as a cartload o' monkeys, or
else they're foamin' at the mouth like
mad dogs. A Boche is no good till he's
dead, I say. We've bin too soft with 'em."

224

(C TT*

IT'S A GREAT DO "

'i 1 -I

What was it about your officer, then,
Micky ? "

" Mr, , as fine a lad he was as ever

ye saw on p'rade, an* he knew how to
take care of his platoon, too, I can tell
ye. We was in their front line then,
clearin' the trench. ^ Ve'd took a whole

lot o' the beggars pnsoners, an' Mr. ,

he'd never let ye lay a finger on a Boche
if the fellow made a sign o' puttin' up
his hands, although he'd seen something
o' theur dirty tricks, too. * No, by God I '
he said, * not in my platoon, Micky. It's
a point of honour, Micky,' he says. Much
they care for honour, the cruel beasts
they are. We come to a dug-out that had
the entrance to it half blown in, an' I
was all for bombin' it first, and askin'
questions after. But my officer, he

" IT'S A GREAT DO

)}

225

wouldn't have it. He kep' in front, with
me an' the rest o' No. 1 section behind
him. * Wo ist da ? ' he sings out down
the dug-out, in their own lingo, you see.
And one of the sausage-eaters he calls
out, all so meek an' perUte, in English,
you know: * Only me, sir,' he says.
*Well, come on out, an' nobody'll hurt

ye,' says Mr. . * Cannot move, sir ;

very bad wound, sir,' says the Boche—

damn him!

" Well, I wanted to go and see to the

blighter, but Mr. saw the bomb m

me hand, and didn't altogether trust me,
maybe. *Wait a minute, Micky,' says
he; an' down he goes. Nex' minute I
heard a groan, an'—* They've stuck me,
Micky,' very faint like, from Mr.

" * Here, my God, boysl ' I says to the

226

IT'S A GR^AT DO "

section,
Mr. —

* the swine has killed

* Well, we just made one rush
for that dug-out. One of 'em stuck nte
with his baynit, here, ye see, at the end
of the passage. He'll do no more stickin'.
I smashed his head with me butt. An* I
got one other with me baynit. An' I
could hear others runnin' like rabbits in
the passages. I got one < i our= to look

after Mr, , though I ct>uld see he ^as

done, and I sent the others bacK t the
trench quick to see if they could catch
any of the Boches gettinji out another
way. Then me other chap an' me, we
followed on vhere we 1 '*arr »en annin',
an' I don't mind tellin y 4, hat with
seein' po( voung Mr. — the sting

o' that Boche bi -ait in n. de, I was
seein' prettj red.

IHHH

ITS A GREAT DO

227

»v

T re w s two of tue devils I*d got
in the Jug-i it, an' there were five more
altogether, o le a sergeant. T ^ere was
two o' my chaps waitin' for em when
they got to the othe*- ent^^nce in the
trench, an' my matt me we ^me along
pretty close bel M i They squealed
all right when • . v . the point of

Tim 's bavn ir t iun just at the

mouth of the ,-oul, wtiere they thought
they was g ir tc ?et clear. They turned
an' come o .. way then, with Tim an'
his mate behind 'em. An' then they
met me ir my mate, an'— well, they
won't mt nobody else this side o' hell.
We fought like rats in that hole, an'
poor Tim he was kiUed. I got
chipped about a bit meself; but I
was ih wild about my officer, they

228

" rrS A GREAT DO "

hadn't got much of a chance, the dirty

hounds !

((

Aye, 't'were a pity they got Tim an*
the officer; a pity that." (The speaker
was a very big man with a rough-hewn
granite-like face — a farm-worker, I would
say — ^by no means sad or gloomy ; but
of a reflective turn. His hands were
enormous, and another man told me he
had done great execution with them at
close quarters. I could well believe it.
He ruminated now apparently with great
satisfaction.)

"There's nothing very civilised about
*em, even when they've lived in England.
If England's got any sense there won't
be any more of 'em live here yet awhile."

"Tom's goin' to stand for Parliament
when the war'slover I "

" IT'S A GREAT DO " 229

" I could teach 'em a bit about Boches
if I did."

" Well, see you raise the bacon ration
for us, Tom."

" An' you'll mention that little matter
of the strawberry jam, won't ye ? "

[i— 1-wa - r ' 'jT^ . ■"»■ ■'~cT¥' -

CHAPTER XX

ON THE WAY TO LONDON

For the time I was leaving behind me
the long, trimly kept landing-stage at
Southampton, with its acres of dean
garnished sheds in which the womided
lie in serried ranks quietly awaiting the
different trdns. I was travelling with
some of them in one of the smoothly
running hospital trains boimd for London.
From engine to gutfd's van the interior
of the long train was immaculate, spot-
less, a triumph of scientific organisation,
of carefully thought out, most admirably
and consistently administered system. The

230

ON THE WAY TO LONDON 281

accommodation was simply the very best,
neither more nor less, that modem in-
genuity can provide for the easy trans-
port of the sick and womided. For
the General officer and for the private it
was all precisely alike; not by reason
of haste or emergency or accident, but
because nothing better can be designed,
and the authorities hold that the best
cannot be too good for the soldier of
whatever rank who is struck down in
the performance of his duty ; in the war
which for us means the defence of civilisa-
tion against the onslaught of the modem
Hun — ^the mad dog of Europe.

The train slowed down to a momentary
stop, half in and half out of the station,
at historic Winchester. A fast train
from town had just previously passed

282 ON THE WAY TO LONDON

through, bringmg with it early editions
of the evening papers. Our pause was
hardly appreciable; perhaps we did not
quite come to a standstill. But one enter-
prising orderly managed to obtain a single
copy of an evening paper through a
wmdow near the guard's van. At that
time I was at the far end of the train,
near its engine, talking to some wounded
men of a north country regiment.

In a matter of perhaps two minutes,
it actually was before the train had
regained its full speed, the news in that
evening paper reached us there in the fore
part of the tram. I am not quite sure
how it came. I started then on a walk
through the train to its rear end. It is a
pleasant privilege to carry cheery news to
these devoted lovers of good cheer— the

ON THE WAY TO LONDON 288

((

wounded. But it was I who was given
the news; from every cot and with
tumultuous enthusiasm among the sitting
cases. No more than two minutes had
elapsed since we glided through Win-
chester. But:

" Rumania's come in."
Oh, yes ; it's official."
What about the Balkan-Zug and the
highway to Baghdad now ? "

" Pretty^good day for Serbia, this 1 "
"Didn't some fellow say it would
shorten the war by six months ? "

"The blackboard writers in the
trenches will be busy to-night."

News for Fritz, all right, to-day."
This ought to show 'em the Allies
don't mean to stop at any half measures.
The Boche fighting machine has got to

284 ON THE WAY TO LONDON

be smashed right up. They ought to see
it coming, now."

"WeU, I'm glad," said an elderly
Colonel, with his right arm slung. And
the cool, quiet satisfaction of his tone,
so suggestive of a man's unalterable
determination, was curiously impressive.
"People have thought 'em slow, but I
suspect they had excellent reasons for
biding their time. You may be pretty
sure they knew the best time. It's a
sort of underUning of the letters of fire
onthewaU. Yes, I'm glad. I fancy the
Boche will be able to read this."

I was unable to find a single man who
had not had the news. One heard quietly
cheery murmurs of "Good!" "First-
rate I " and the Uke, even from the sort
of " cases " one does not speak to, because

ON THE WAY TO LONDON 285

they lie so still, or because, perhaps, a
glance at labels or bandages has pre-
viously told one that their condition is

serious.

" It's true, is it, about Rumania, sir ? "
said one muffled voice. And I recog-
nised a corporal for whom, with some
difficulty, I had arranged the smoking
of a cigarette on the landing-stage. His
bandages were a very complete disguise,
and I had learned, what I think he had
known for a day or two, that he would
never see again. I was told this corporal
had thrown a number of bombs, after
the explosion which had robbed him for
ever of his sight, and woimded him in
half a dozen places. Inscrutable, incom-
parable courage, of the spirit that no
devilishly inspired Boche device can ever

286 ON THE WAY TO LONDON

quell ! The very voice of thjs man was
eloquent of modest but quite unquench-
able good cheer. Bemg EngUsh, we can-
not embrace such men; but to the end
of our days we can pay them the homage
of real respect. We can see to it, in
strictly practical ways, that we never
become wholly unworthy of their splendid

sacrifices.

" Yes, Corporal ; it's true." And then
some sudden stir in one m&de one add :
"And coming on top of what you did,
there below Thi^pval, Corporal, it's pretty

good, isn't it ? "

What they did there below Thi^pval I
He was only one of that heroic band ; all
humble, aU modest, all mvincible ; merely
invincible. I have talked with a number
of them.

.^dL

ON THE WAY TO LONDON 287

The truly great, the epic episodes of
this vast war, are so numerous, so ahnost
continuous, that the world cannot hope
to know very much about nine-tenths
of them. But, known or unknown, nothmg
truly great can ever reaUy be wasted.
It can never be as if it had not been.
Never. The measure of these episodes
cannot be taken. The Umit of their
results cannot possibly be set. Each is
one impulse in the rhythmic symphony
of pressure which is presently to i:^ *he
modem world of the most deadly peril
civilisation has faced in our time or any
other time. If there are left in Berlin
sanely understanding students of the cata-
clysm, a knell must be rung in their
hearts by all such episodes as that in
which this simple English corporal (with

■S^'-'^i

988 ON THE WAY TO LONDON

no thought or desire in life but just, very
simply, to do his duty), smitten to his
knees and blinded by the explosion of a
German shell, continued fighting, with
the weapon he had been taught to use,
till carried away, because he happened
to be one of those who had been *' detailed,"
as the phrase goes, to present a forth-
right English no! to the ferociously
desperate assertion of the might of the
vaunted Prussian Guard.

"No, we didn't let *em through, sir;
they couldn't get through us." That
was as much as the corporal had to say
about it, and it is not easy to induce any
of his heroic comrades to say much more.
That is their English way — God bless
them! Yet from one here and there,
from a gunner officer, from an intelligence

ON THE WAY TO LONDON 289

officer of a unit not in the " show," and,
for that matter, from the terse and
pregnant lines of Sir Douglas Haig's own
communiques, we know that even this
unparalleled war has yielded no more
splendid instance of sheer endurance, of
stark, unshakable bravery, than that wUd
week gave us below Thi^pval, where
German desperation saw its most con-
centrated efforts and the flower of its
Army broken, wave after wave, against
the cool, unalterable determination of the
citizen soldiers of Britain's " contemptible

little Army."

" The men were splendid I "

Printed in Bnsluid by W. H. Smith & Son,

The \rd«n Press.

Stamford Street, London, S.E.

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